Lecture with Anya Hindmarch on Sustainability and Fashion

[Music] thank you hello I&#39;m Michael librake and this is cleaning up welcome to season 10. to help get the season off to a good start my guest this week is Anya hindmarch one of Britain&#39;s most celebrated fashion designers and a leading voice in the industry on sustainability and you started a business in London in 1987 and has 16 stores worldwide as well as her own retail Village in Pond Street Chelsea with the launch of her I am not a plastic bag totes in 2007 she helped kick-start a Countrywide debate around single-use Plastics and this year Anya is collaborating with leading supermarkets again to prevent Plastics pollution in 2017 Anya was awarded a CBE and in 2019 she became a Greenpeace Ambassador please welcome Anya hind march to cleaning up before we start if you&#39;re enjoying cleaning up please make sure that you like subscribe and leave a review that really helps other people to find us to make sure you never miss an episode subscribe to us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform and follow us on Twitter LinkedIn or Instagram to participate in the discussion also you can visit cleaningup.live to access over 160 hours of conversations with extraordinary climate leaders and you can subscribe to our free newsletter that&#39;s cleaning up dot live cleaning up is brought to you by our lead supporter Capricorn Investment Group the Libre foundation and the gillardini foundation so Anya welcome to this first episode in season 10 of cleaning up this is a conversation I&#39;ve really been looking forward to it&#39;s so nice to be with you nice to see you Michael thank you for having me so the way we always start is I ask my guests to describe who they are in their own words because I&#39;ve done a little intro but I&#39;ve probably got all sorts of things wrong and haven&#39;t given it the emphasis that you would give it so who are you it&#39;s just like it depends day to day at the moment um I suppose I well first of all my my name is Ania hindmatch I&#39;m I&#39;m British even though I don&#39;t sound totally British um and I am a I suppose a fashion uh designer I&#39;m a CEO of a company of a brand called anyhow much um but I suppose in this context I&#39;m a sort of slightly accidental um environmentalist in a way um and I spent much of my career rather by default has been devoted to projects that have been um about sort of I suppose using my platform to discuss um you know environmental issues and uh so so that&#39;s become a loss of what I do but in my day-to-day I also make and sell um rather beautiful high-end leather goods and um and fashion accessories and we sell those um in many places all over the world so that&#39;s what I do normally I&#39;m also involved in the the Royal Marsden cancer charity as a trustee and a trustee on the Tate so I&#39;ve done lots of things in the art world as well so you um you said you&#39;re a designer you are also something of an of an icon um for your work on sustainability so I&#39;ll confess I&#39;m not your kind of traditional target market perhaps but I did do some research and I asked a number of people who actually are your target market and every single one of them owns some of your uh some of your products and and I asked one in particular I said why did you buy one of Anya hind March&#39;s uh pieces and she said instantly she said sustainability she said sustainability that was the sell for her so uh how much does that resonate I mean is that Did you sort of hook the business to sustainability or was that the accident that you&#39;re referring to when you call yourself an accidental sort of spokesperson it&#39;s very very much an accident in a way because when I started my business when I was 18 so I started designing then and making and selling products to stores and then opening stores and opening stores all over the world so that&#39;s my kind of Core Business um and it wasn&#39;t until 2007 which sounds quite a long time ago but actually was quite a long time after I had started my business I&#39;m 55 now um that um we were approached um to uh I suppose amplify the message of a book that had just come out which was trying to um encourage people not to use single-use plastic um and that really started a project which which led to four projects really and I&#39;m hoping we can talk about them individually but the first project was called I&#39;m not a plastic bag that which led on to a project called I am a plastic bag which then LED on to a project called Return To Nature which then LED on to a project called Universal bag so these four projects have sort of scanned right through um you know from 2007 to to sort of current um today um so so I very much fell into it and and and really I was sort of passionate about it from the get-go I should I should I should caveat this with my father as a Plastics was it well is a Plastics engineer so I&#39;ve been brought up with plastic all my life it&#39;s quite funny already given that so most of my career trying to to um to stop people using it but those those projects um it sort of started by accident but actually have become a real passion project for me um and I think I&#39;m no expert I say that all the time and I&#39;m far from perfect but what I do have in my own small way I suppose as a sort of a voice which you get in fashion fashionism very powerful Communicator you know it&#39;s very viral and it&#39;s amazing that fashion can make you wear your hair in one way one year and you know short trousers one minute and long trousers the next and and really persuade you to behave differently and I think that&#39;s what excites me about um the sort of place I have if you like to talk in this world from really with very little experience certainly when I started but with a voice to hopefully take people in a very honest open and and perhaps easily understandable way and that was why I was so much looking forward to this other than it&#39;s always a pleasure to chat with you um but um you know I kind of know how businesses work you know I&#39;ve built successful businesses I&#39;ve studied business uh the things that I&#39;ve done well have all been business to business I&#39;ve tried two business to Consumer businesses and they both failed so I don&#39;t have that kind of what the Germans would call the fingerspitz and gefu you know the fingertip feeling for how do you actually sort of I don&#39;t want to say manipulate but how do you change people&#39;s behaviors and I want to come back to that and I think that is pretty much at the heart of what we&#39;re going to talk about but just to get the sort of Bio piece a little bit fleshed out how many years was it between you famously going to Italy um spotting a trend starting to get some bags made and starting your business aged I think 18 19 um and 2007 I&#39;m not trying to ask you how old you are and I&#39;ll steer clear of that so give us a kind of rough number not an exactly so well I&#39;m 55 now I started my business when I was 18 and I launched so the business started in 1987 and the the first project we did um environmental project we did was in 2007. so quite a lot of years later and obviously when you&#39;re 18 there&#39;s a few years at your kitchen table trying to work out what you&#39;re doing and finding suppliers and dealing with all the things that business throws at you but so it was quite a long time and very much my business is a fashion business that has um you know like all businesses in my opinion now has to have at the heart of it you know a sort of responsible I&#39;m so bored of the word sustainable but a responsible attitude to its Supply chains and I think that you know whilst it&#39;s very difficult and I&#39;m sure we&#39;ll talk about the elephant in the room how do you square that Circle of commerciality with being responsible um and you know so it&#39;s very hard to be perfect but I think you you need to take people on that Journey people people do care they often don&#39;t care enough but they do care so that&#39;s the sort of time scale and um and and you know there&#39;s been these four specific projects which I just did some mental arithmetic there which was it&#39;s about 15 years that you were in fashion before something around that I mean 15 20 years that you were doing fashion and you were really not doing these environmental projects were you feeling I&#39;m very interested did you feel that kind of Disconnect between presumably you were already concerned about those issues or were you just blind to them no I wasn&#39;t I was I wasn&#39;t blind and actually when so with the very first project was um I&#39;m not a plastic bag and happened because someone approached us who&#39;d written a book which was um called um uh save that changed the world for a fiver the book was five pounds and in the book there were 40 actions of how to behave in a more responsible way and the first action in this book was wherever possible refused plastic bags and they came to us because I kind of knew the person in directly and they said would you help us amplify the message of this book particularly around the plastic bags and I have one of those light bulb moments because I had been feeling um well I&#39;ve been hearing the word you know the environment you know global warming and and and you know lots of the been bits of of um of kind of communication that has come into my sphere and I was thinking what could I do as an individual and it was quite hard I think we all felt a bit hopeless at that point um and so I suddenly realized actually I could use my platform of um bags and being a sort of spokesperson for bags as you said I&#39;d already had 15 years of sort of working in that sphere so I had a voice for that and um and I felt I could actually sort of if you like sort of mimic the what was called the it bag formula in those days it was a stupid idea but there was a huge sort of issue with um very fashionable bags the right people wearing them a sort of scarcity of supply and that becomes quite sort of exciting and and um and sort of viral and and people get quite you know quite excited about that so I thought if I could produce a bag that was for five pounds mimicking the book of change the world for a fiver work with supermarkets because I really wanted to go to the coal phase where most of the sort of single-use plastic was sort of coming from uh or certainly distributed or a lot of it um and actually therefore you know we were making handbags that were many hundreds of pounds so offering one of our bags designed by us for five pounds was quite intoxicating for the customer and the aim was awareness it was it was very simple the aim was just look again so we designed actually a cotton bag which in fact I looked back on it now it wasn&#39;t even sort of fair trade cotton or organic cotton and you know all these things you learn as you go and we launched it actually very initially with a few very very high fashion stores so you know Colette and Paris and some really kind of cool stores limited amounts sold out immediately and then we launched it with Sainsbury&#39;s who an incredibly Brave partner actually we&#39;ve just partnered with them again amongst other supermarkets because you know that&#39;s quite a tricky place for them to sit you know they&#39;re offering something as an alternative but they were still offering the single-use plastic and they uh launched it in their stores I mean just to give you a sort of sense of the madness 80 000 people queued on launch day to across the country to buy one of the bags it became an absolute crazy sort of mad sensation um but what it did was was gain a huge amount of traction and coverage and press and it was the front page of many newspapers um we then took it around the world and it just got more and more and more crazy um so it did absolutely communicate I think one of my proudest things was the fact that I saw lots and lots of copies of these bags and normally obviously as a designer you don&#39;t want copies but they were actually translating it into Mandarin and into Italian and into French and and therefore communicating the message um even further the other thing that people mention when I say that I&#39;m going to be talking to you on cleaning up is the sense of humor the sort of cheekiness you know I&#39;m not a plastic bag and you&#39;ve done you&#39;ve done beer bag as well separately and I think that was to do with your cancer uh work and uh uh if I&#39;m not wrong and then you but then I am a blastic and there&#39;s this kind of and then just the the icon the iconography is the the The Cheeky face the eyes the way you know the look The Brand um that use of humor has been pretty sort of central to what you do as well has it not well I think the thing is in in the world of of um environmental work and sustainability so many you know brilliant and knowledgeable scientists but they tend to lose the audience of of the sort of you know the the normal um sort of customer and um layperson so I think that cutting through that with a bit of humor which makes it a bit more engaging and perhaps just stats and facts and actually taking people on that Journey with the the failures and this of open sourcing and the you know and I was very open for example when we did that first project even I didn&#39;t know about you know how you know pollution and how thirsty the cotton crop is for example um and actually explaining sort of saying oh I got that wrong and now I&#39;ve learned so I think just taking people on the journey with humor and kind of quite bite-sized and easy to kind of grasp communication is actually quite important to changing people&#39;s behavior so and perhaps we can add that through a rather sort of fashion or perhaps sort of slightly humorous um uh sort of um you know method so that&#39;s that&#39;s why but I think it&#39;s also what we do we tend we don&#39;t take life too seriously and what we do and there&#39;s not that many people in the kind of Net Zero climate change you know just stop oil Extinction Rebellion or at the EU you know developing policy or working on the inflation reduction act in the US I mean they&#39;re not sort of they&#39;re not getting the message across by wisecracking that&#39;s for sure well I think it&#39;s interesting isn&#39;t it because I think it can be I think you need to do all things it&#39;s so important this you know this crisis that actually we need to do all things we need to shock and we need to probably be a bit annoying um but there are other groups who also need to take people on the journey and I said this could be really fun or by the way this is a much nicer way to do a better thing and so I think we&#39;ve always gone in that this is a much nicer way to do a better thing at root and I&#39;m not dissing other approaches because probably you need all of them because if it&#39;s a bit annoying too occasionally perhaps that actually does um also make people change their behavior because they want to avoid issues but um our approach has been one of actually you know come with us we&#39;ll show you a nicer way to do it we&#39;ll inspire you this is a beautiful thing how about wear this and actually it&#39;s it&#39;s a it&#39;s a better way of moving your stuff around so that&#39;s been our approach and it&#39;s not saying it&#39;s it&#39;s a rise approach and it shouldn&#39;t be the only approach but it&#39;s been one that&#39;s that&#39;s actually I think brought people on the journey in a positive way I think we tend to be well I tend to be quite a positive person um and I think that will be a much more natural way for us to communicate and so I think it&#39;s important in the mix honestly absolutely there&#39;s there are different roles and different communication styles that are appropriate for each I want to come back to some of the kind of trade-offs and some of the conundrums but first take us through you&#39;ve got those four projects I mean the first one I&#39;m not a plastic bag and then they&#39;re these kind of almost riots uh as people queue and they&#39;re desperate to get hold of this what was the what was the journey then where did you go from there and you know we&#39;ll come back to the the ideas that you&#39;ve already put out there of not being perfect first time and learning and how you communicate changing Behavior but what was the actual Journey what were the what were the steps so after that first project which was very much a baptism of fire and you know not-for-profit and just a sort of good thing to do we we it made a difference actually so whilst um it had this incredible reaction I mean you know I mean 30 people went to hospital in Taiwan to give you a sense of you know obviously not proud of that we stopped the projects immediately after that but it just got out of control it we&#39;re absolutely insane all around the world so it got lots of attention the message was carried further as I suggested it was it then got some negative attention through the sort of lack of organic cotton um but it was it was great and actually the the figures from the British retail Consortium I think were that the plastic bag consumption levels in the UK pre the project for something like 10 billion and it went down to six in a year so it didn&#39;t it did have a very real impact which was fantastic and as a consequence and people started imposing tax on carrier buys and so on so that was great and we went back to some of our day jobs and thought we&#39;d have done our bit there um we&#39;d obviously been involved in lots of things along the way and and but actually it wasn&#39;t until 2020 when I just I looked around and someone told me the stat that I think there&#39;s something like eight billion tons of plastic on the planet right now and it just I just thought you know this project is so not done even though awareness has happened that that had done and I think our project contributed to that but actually we&#39;re not done on this and obviously the the the issue moved on to circularity there&#39;s all this plastic on the planet how can we keep it out of landfill and make it and reuse it so um so really um we you know really wanted to work back into the project but actually you know rather than I am not a first-it bag actually I am a plastic bag so how could we reuse what&#39;s what&#39;s around and make something beautiful so we we sort of delved into that project went two years on R D actually very expensive and complicated because actually it was sort of early into making um you know pet plastic to recycle it to Source it to work out how to use it every every bolt of fabric when it first arrived was a different width and and weight and you know dealt differently with the the way that we me man handled it which made the production incredibly complicated so it was already two years of hell in fact even as we launched it we were worried that actually it was it was quite fraught with difficulty one of the things that happened also we developed a fabric which is recycled pet which behaved so much like a beautiful cotton canvas drill that it actually got dirty which actually wasn&#39;t very you know we have to make things that our customers want as it doesn&#39;t work so we ended up putting a coating on it like you might on a cotton canvas but obviously we wanted that to be recycled as well and we managed to find um PVB which is actually the plastic that is between windscreens that holds the glass together so it doesn&#39;t smash and to repurpose that and save it from landfill and actually use that as a coating and again that was very different because obviously different windscreens and different temperatures and it was really quite a head fry getting the whole thing done but anyway we we got there and um that actually also made me think quite a lot about leather um and so just to say also that when we launched that project we we actually slightly as part protest and part art installation closed all of our stores all of our London Stores um and actually filled them took all the product out and filled the stores to the brim to the ceiling with 90 000 used plastic bottles to connect people to what it looks like which I think is something like six minutes of landfill because I think also part of the communication pieces is people need immediate bite-sized attention-grabbing messages and actually when you see six minutes of landfill and and we literally had lores we collected all these bottles ourselves which is probably why we all got covered in the process by the way we launched this in the in the in 2019 um but when you see a store fill it&#39;s so disgusting and it&#39;s so ridiculous and I always say that&#39;s that wonderful that someone once said to me if you had to actually plant or bury everything that you take sort of waste in your own garden you&#39;d actually just stop taking it you know you stop it at sauce and so actually seeing it there and actually being connected to it it&#39;s one thing I care passionately about actually which is that we need to get children to visit landfill sites and we need to get children to to visit um recycling centers just to make them realize you know when you throw something away there is no way you know the thing we all know but anyway that project which was again incredibly powerful from a communication um point of view we toured it around the world we&#39;ve done lots of projects and we filled up stores in in Japan and in Hong Kong with bottles we sort of really sort of made made a point um also made me think about leather because we we actually had thought about trimming the bag in a recycled leather at a time with the fact that the whole project was about recycling and when we dug into to leather recycled leather is basically the bits of all of leather mashed down and then remixed into some soup of plastic so actually recycle leather is not the answer we then looked of course at vegan leather which is just it&#39;s just plastic it&#39;s just you know what people used to refer to as some pleather in those days um and actually we started looking into leather because leather has such a bad name that I started looking into it again and realizing that leather actually is the most amazing material um so we we actually ended up using leather that was really really well sourced but the point of explaining this is it actually led me to the next project which was called uh Return To Nature because I then thought actually in waste is our in nature there is no waste in nature there&#39;s no need for landfill you know you don&#39;t see a dead dog in landfill do you it actually like an apple it falls from the tree it actually you know it biodegrades it composts it adds nutrients to the soil and it actually benefits soil health so could we actually make and you know I sort of set myself the question could I make a bag that would behave like nature so that actually the end of life if you actively composted it that it would actually break down and benefit soil Health leaving nothing nasty and actually nourishing the soil to support further growth so we set out on this project which was another two years of r d and by the way very expensive R D um and actually worked with a number of people and a huge amount of Trials to look at how you Source responsible leather and there&#39;s a whole book in that subject um you know and that means it has to come because actually cattle are very good for soil as long as it&#39;s a healthy you know regenerative Farm how you then turn leather responsibly so we work with a number of amazing people that I sort of discovered and sort of quite an iterative process really through the project so people who where you can Source skins that have you know have have the animals with the best animal welfare and we work as an incredible company um called scan hide working with amazing um experts in tanning Hoffman&#39;s and finishing finding a way to turn the leather using no heavy metals no Chrome no no nasty stuff basically so that it left nothing in the soil when it broke down so we actually worked with zeolite which is actually a form of clay to naturally turn the skins and then finishing the leather it&#39;s so interesting when you dig into leather finishing pretty much all leather these days is coated and plastic a thin film of PVC so the reason you don&#39;t have to polish your shoes anymore as we used to when we were children is because actually they have this sort of you know bulletproof coating of plastic on the outside and the reason you never your trainers stay white and get don&#39;t get sort of dark with rain is because they&#39;re basically leather with a lot of plastic coating on them so it&#39;s quite horrifying when you think about it so we set out to try and find a different way to protect the leather because if you don&#39;t protect the leather you need to find a way to have a barrier because otherwise it gets very wet and and breaks down immediately so um we found this amazing people it&#39;s a company called evolved by Nature you have this product which is activated silk so essentially it&#39;s liquid silk because actually silk is one of the best natural polymers actually it&#39;s very interesting I mean Nature has it all Nature has things that do this and that it&#39;s all part of a circular economy essentially so it it naturally breaks down so we work with them to to find a way to have the finishing of the leather the protection the final barrier coating um made out of liquid silk um and in fact we needed a tiny Top-Up of wax in the end we actually got to the stage where we&#39;re just about to launch this beautiful product we&#39;ve passed all the tests it did biodegrade it did compost and I went out in severe rain and in severe rain just testing the product the product ended up with a bit of chickenpox because the the water was getting through the the silk so we ended up finding this amazing family in the UK you have terrible allergies so they had to remake all the natural products used in the house without any nasties in it and we they had this one wax that we use as the final belt and braces coating on the top of the liquid the the liquid silk um to actually stop the rain getting in so it was such an amazing journey and and we worked obviously all the way through testing this and externally auditing it to make sure that we knew it would actually biodegrade and compost and so it was independently tested but we had a lovely moment at the very end where um we had the compost that had the leather in it and we grew a control set of plants and another set of plants to test alongside and the control set without our compost delivered plants that grew were 20 shorter so our little compost delivered our little plants which were 20 stronger um with our with our leather composted into it so it was an amazing moment so to show really that you can produce beautiful fashion products that are very sophisticated customer would love um that are that are manageable to make and actually that could never end up in landfill so that was I mean it&#39;s a slightly academic project but I really wanted to prove that we still sell that product very well today um and and it was an amazing very expensive but great r d Journey which I think Sparks I hope a lot of conversations in the way that anyone is is doing product development and um and new product development in fashion so at a garden center near you you&#39;ll now be able to buy one of your handbags as the most expensive fertilizer in the world because never mind the handbagging it actually delivers 20 more plant growth I think we do have a business in compost don&#39;t you think I think that&#39;s the way for compost by the way is the most fascinating subject but anyway we won&#39;t get to that now but it it&#39;s very very interesting so people got scared thinking that the bags might sort of actually break down and compost and sort of um or break down uh on their shoulder but you know you have to actively put it with compost but no it&#39;s a really interesting project and um and I think you know sorts of conversations what I find fascinating about those stories is that you have actually you&#39;ve done you you&#39;ve focused on the research because that&#39;s the bit that you see and it&#39;s the bit that you have to pay for but you&#39;re also developing a supply chain because there&#39;s all these companies out there that that are doing bits that individually don&#39;t add up to you know a lot but actually they are because it&#39;s an interesting question about the circular economy I think a lot of people think that the circular economy happens within one company so you&#39;ve got recycling which everybody knows is a sort of chain like a it&#39;s a relay race a baton race but circularity I think a lot of people think it&#39;s about one company that has to be circular but it&#39;s not it is actually still a bat on race it&#39;s still a supply chain and there&#39;s still all sorts of elements to it and that&#39;s what was so exciting about this project actually and actually in preparation for this call I listened actually we did I did a I interviewed all the people involved all those individual Partners all of whom we discovered you know by speaking and researching and so on and some failed and some did and we put them all together on a call actually I listened to the I did a sort of interview with all of them because it was such a really exciting moment when we finally got that little part plant growth you know that was the final exam result if you like of all the work and they&#39;re all really interesting people and I think it&#39;s joining those dots and having projects you can pull together all those experts and pull it together for a result is really exciting I think the most important thing then is to share that very openly and that&#39;s the one thing I&#39;m passionate about because normally in business you you know you spent all this time researching and finding your your trusted supply chain and you guard it with your life and I think one of the big shifts actually in in business now is transparency and it&#39;s very hard because it hurts a bit as a you know when you put a lot of money and effort and resource into it but I feel that&#39;s the one thing that we really need to do and I&#39;ve tried to really kind of just push through that and just so and hence if you if you look on our website you see it&#39;s very open on who did what and who and how we do it and everyone&#39;s um you know part of the process so I think that transparency piece is a sort of more modern way of doing business and that is a sort of definite shift and I definitely see how that is part of the Whole Net Zero transition or not just Net Zero but environmental responsibility um because you know you now there will be no doubt conferences amongst those these have you know good suppliers the suppliers that get it they will sell a bit better they will meet each other there will be conferences there will be exhibitions there will be shows there will be sections in the fabric um annual Nessa in Germany or in Italy wherever it wherever and then you&#39;re going to have to innovate more to stay ahead of that and that&#39;s really how the kind of tipping points happen isn&#39;t it it is it&#39;s hard because you know we put two I think two and a half years for each of those projects I&#39;ve spoken about in r d every time we tested another thickness of that liquidated silk versus the wax how did it affect the leather what did the rain do actually is the tannage a little different is the nausea like actually is the thickness of the natural material the skin different anyway every time we do that every time that had to go to the external Auditors to check is it actually compostable is it actually biodegrading is it meeting the requirements it was another three thousand pounds we did I cannot tell you how much money we kept sort of you know applying into this these projects so it&#39;s quite hard so then can I go guys this is what we did and then people can jump straight to the sort of you know the Chase and and produce products that have the same uh use your r d but I think it&#39;s important I really it&#39;s the one thing that I&#39;ve I&#39;ve I&#39;ve sort of even though it&#39;s commercially a little bit kind of you know hurts a little bit I think it&#39;s key and that&#39;s why I think also if you&#39;re very open and honest about what you&#39;ve done and share the journey with people people also they have a bit of loyalty and respect for for your brand because you&#39;re you&#39;re going out on a limb you&#39;re putting your money where your mouth is and you&#39;re taking them on a very honest journey I think I think that&#39;s that&#39;s well received by your customers so that I think is the shift actually with this especially with the Next Generation they they they um they repay you if you like for the pain and I think that&#39;s why they&#39;re very loyal to a lot of these Brands I think Patagonia is a great example of that where they&#39;re very you know they&#39;re very sort of front and center on on what they do and and share that journey and people are very loyal as a result so whilst it feels a bit sort of um uh you know it feels a bit counter-intuitive I think that actually it&#39;s the right thing to do and actually interestingly the the customer does actually repay that loyalty they&#39;re very loyal um and repay you back um so it&#39;s interesting now and very clearly it has worked for you because as I say when I asked why buy a hind March bag then the answer was sustainability so people can copy the sustainability but they can&#39;t copy necessarily I mean the brand is much harder to catch up with but so that&#39;s talking about influencing the supply chain it&#39;s a good point but this is going to interrupt you rather really apologies but just to that point it&#39;s interesting because I I talk a lot about brand obviously because that&#39;s what I do but I always think people talk about brand um as a sort of you know there&#39;s all these sort of mantras and taglines and mission statements but actually brand is behavior isn&#39;t it ultimately and I always think that actually um that&#39;s all that matters that&#39;s what people experience and that&#39;s a patchwork of a thousand examples of touch points with with a company and a brand and their values actually are more important than anything so I I do think it&#39;s um you know that&#39;s that&#39;s a very overused word brand but it&#39;s actually a behavior that counts and actually I was going to switch to behavior um at exactly that point because I was going to make the I was going to acknowledge that you have influenced the supply chain and you have influenced your competitors because if they copy you then that is influence the behavior at the consumer of the consumer though um that you brought up um I I guess that I&#39;m starting to sort of ask questions out okay this all sounds marvelous but what percentage of consumers and what percentage of their behavior are you really accessing because what you&#39;ve done is tremendous but then the question is to what extent does it really kind of change the world or or have a have a large scale impact um not yet I think it&#39;s fair to say but I think that what happens is that um if if I demand if my if I can make my customer interested in uh or make customers interested in buying the right thing then they demand that of their of where you know their their brand they&#39;re buying from I think it also goes further up in supply chain because you know if if people I mean selfridges did a brilliant job where they just banned any Exotics very early on and um and have been very strict about what they&#39;re buying as a consequence every supplier to salvages it&#39;s only rushing around trying to find an alternative so they&#39;re going to all their supply chains and kind of going can you produce something that doesn&#39;t have x y and z in it so actually you can make a difference all the way out to supply chain um I think I mean you know the reality is also we need to keep businesses healthy and to be selling things because actually we all know that doing the right thing slips down anyone&#39;s agenda if people are struggling cost of living and so on so you know there&#39;s all of those those pushes and polls but I I do believe that even if it doesn&#39;t have an immediate huge effect it it has a you know it is viral and and we have to do it anyway there&#39;s no there&#39;s no no options as far as I&#39;m concerned but I I think you know all the projects we do make a difference they might just communicate they might change people&#39;s behavior with you know to to reuse on plastic bags they might um make people think you know it might spark a Big Brand like Nike to go and actually could we make a product that can never end up in landfill I mean that would be a great result and I hope it actually also makes my customers like our brand and buy our product more and I mean it actually led to the the fourth project that that I&#39;ve sort of worked on more recently which I wanted to go back to the supermarkets because you know I think ultimately that&#39;s probably where I can have the most effect and I think that that sort of magic thing of someone who normally sells something in a very expensive price point and and making it very accessible to widely there&#39;s a magic to that which can have quite a quite a an impactful um benefit so we we launched this thing called Universal bag where we wanted to work with all the supermarkets which is quite an ambitious project and I I do believe in that um you know Eco not ego thing and um you know going to therefore that we&#39;ve worked with Sainsbury&#39;s waitrose uh We&#39;ve launched Co-op we&#39;ve just launched Tesco um and and many one time which was launch and which haven&#39;t yet launched I don&#39;t put my foot in it but we&#39;re working across not only the UK but also across the world which is launched in Hong Kong just launched in Japan we&#39;re just talking to every country across huge Supermarket players um to launch a bag that is um fully made from recycled 100 recycled materials um that is um also guaranteed for 10 years it I suppose that the the way to explain it is that bags for life are not for life and actually that it&#39;s not working and it&#39;s ending up apparently I think people take a bag for life every two weeks so clearly it&#39;s it&#39;s broken and you see them sitting in hedgerows and it&#39;s a disaster and as a result people are making heavier thicker plastic to last which is not being used for long enough periods so um we wanted to try and tackle that problem and the the result is a bag therefore that is is is last 10 years is fully recycled has a very clever recycle available sort of element mechanism to it which is there&#39;s a pocket inside and at the end of life hopefully after 10 years or more you would fold it back into the pocket and it has a name and address free post address and you just put it in any post box and it comes back locally to be recycled locally but more than anything as well it actually is inspiring people because it&#39;s a nice bag which many of the bags for life are not it&#39;s inspiring people to want to use something for a longer period of time so whether they&#39;re using it for the you know the picnic at school or their kids sports stuff or whether they&#39;re using it as I was to Lug stuff from you know the the car to the to the house or food or whatever it is um it&#39;s it inspires this reuse attitude so we&#39;ve really launched all the supermarkets and again it&#39;s been a massive success this is meant to be a permanent project and it&#39;s having quite significant um reach actually and engagement so again I think it&#39;s doing it&#39;s doing lots of different things but but taking it very much too if you liked the masses and that resonates because I started I tried to use bags for life and I&#39;ve got to the point where I realized that they weigh sort of 20 times as much and I only use them five times and then something you know and so it&#39;s clearly not the solution so that&#39;s a great project but I want to come back to this business about the extent to which you can change the consumer behavior um and um the bag your bag that&#39;s got the liquid silk requires more care than the equivalent of spraying with plastic leather bag and you know are you finding people sort of you know happily doing that or do some people say well I don&#39;t want to be polishing my bag I don&#39;t didn&#39;t enjoy polishing my shoes when I was a kid why would I enjoy polishing a bag and and you know how can you really take not just a few people who really love the idea and love what you&#39;re doing but can you take can you take everybody with you on that sort of Journey I think you can with the right communication it becomes a badge of honor I mean I was talking to someone this morning about ink pens full enough because you know we used to all be given an ink pen for our 21st birthday and I you know was so excited to get the ink pen of my dreams and now everyone is using you know just disposable pens and pencils and it&#39;s shocking if you think about it and it gets you know as bad as water bottles really um so we need to make it a beautiful thing that you enjoy refilling your ink pen you enjoy the beauty of a you know the craftsmanship of an ink pen and it becomes something that&#39;s that&#39;s cool because I think this is where fashion has a a very big part to play that if someone you really admire is carrying a beautiful ink pen and you know a really nice reusable bottle it&#39;s you know you want to be like them and we&#39;ve seen how fashion works we see how it&#39;s you know literally someone wears a pair of you know flares one minute and everyone&#39;s suddenly copying them and doing that so it really can work um so I think it can have a massive benefit and answer your question I think it can it can deliver but the fashion industry there&#39;s the fashion industry and there&#39;s there&#39;s fashion and the fashion industry are just clothing it&#39;s 2.1 gigatons of carbon emissions it&#39;s about four percent of all the emissions in the world and not that much of that probably comes from you know behind March bags or or Louis Vuitton you know the vast majority of it is just people who just need clothes and it&#39;s you can call it fast fashion you can call it convenience you can call it people buying clothes for their kids and their kids then six months later or just you know grow out of it or it&#39;s or it falls apart um is it realistic okay I you know I held up my pen when you were talking about the fountain pen because I think the pens need to be things of beauty so I agree with you but but that&#39;s a minority sport you know most people are not they&#39;re just not in a position I mean you know apart from the fact that that most people on this planet live you know in Asia and have relatively modest means and they&#39;re not buying products that are of great beauty that will last 10 or 15 years they&#39;re just trying to sort of I don&#39;t want to say live hand to mouth you know hopefully the majority are beyond that but they&#39;re not buying because of their sort of environmental uh credentials are they no but I think the huge and disgusting over consumption is not actually mostly because someone needs a new t-shirt unfortunately I think there&#39;s many many too many t-shirts on the planet as it is um it&#39;s because actually they&#39;re driven because of fashion and and everyone else&#39;s behavior that they need new they need to look a different way they need the latest so if you in fashion can influence that I think you can make a difference um and you know I&#39;m realistic it&#39;s very it&#39;s not I&#39;m as a woman person it&#39;s not going to happen by me but I think if if you can you know and you do see it in these sort of absolute sort of Mega huge celebrities massive followings if they post something saying actually I&#39;m going to wear this this dress I love this dress I&#39;m gonna wear it it&#39;s 40th time how cool is that you make that call frankly that&#39;s a relief to everyone I think there&#39;s over consumption there&#39;s endless need to have new new is actually it&#39;s disgusting and it&#39;s expensive and it&#39;s exhausting for everyone so we need to buy less and buy better you know that is and we need to rent and we need to buy second hand my kids now buy all their clothes second hand they barely buy anything new so that is absolutely a trend amongst their age group so I actually think that we can make a real difference actually and I think fashion has a big part to play and because it&#39;s actually unsustainable frankly for people&#39;s pockets to keep buying you so I think you&#39;ve lived in a slightly different way but you have got influencers that are reusing and they become they come under intense scrutiny uh Princess K uh the ReUse oh you know did you wear that once before and uh and and so on and that can have quite an impact but it can also open up you know just the use of celebrities at all can also open up the trend of you know trying to be more responsible to it um you know calls it hypocrisy because the next thing that she does is jump on an airplane uh official for sure but I think though that um you know the idea of an influencer or um in fact celebrity the word brings me out and hives to a certain extent so but it&#39;s about who who might influence and who is responsible to use to influence um but frankly even if it&#39;s irresponsible and it makes a difference to a minority and it&#39;s contradictory five minutes later if it makes a difference so what let&#39;s use them yeah I really don&#39;t care I&#39;m not proud I I think we need to I think I mean how lovely was it in covid when you know you were sitting on a zoom call and not having to buy another dress because no one saw what you&#39;re wearing below your waist anyway you know it actually was quite a relief I think this over consumption thing is is driving everyone to it&#39;s crazy and even with my business hat on and trying to grow my business and being responsible to shareholders and so on as we have to do and by the way employing people who then have money to keep it at the top of their agenda so I&#39;m I&#39;m really defend economic success we need to make sure that&#39;s really important because it helps it helps um us do good stuff in the environment even despite that I think we can actually make people buy fewer things if you&#39;re going to buy seven t-shirts in a year actually buy three that are well sourced good cotton responsibly made so I think you can actually keep the same you know Revenue but actually just actually you know change the way that we do it so I think there&#39;s ways through all of this it will take a long time and you chip aware to chip away at it but I really believe there is a solution that could make 20 difference I mean 20 difference would be significant right how do you deal with criticism that you&#39;re kind of you&#39;re almost trying to sort of sell your way to degrowth or your you know your that you&#39;re maintaining a system which is fundamentally just unhealthy well degree if you&#39;re talking from a business point of view so you&#39;re talking about unhealthy from a business point of view I think what I just said is if you you know if you&#39;re buying certain t-shirts is that what you&#39;re saying so what I was thinking more was that the whole edifice of fashion and the way we use uh clothes to Signal status or or in crowdness or you know just the whole thing you&#39;re actually propping up an industry and a cultural phenomenon which is just fundamentally bad for the planet cannot be cannot be made somehow good for the planet but one also has to be pragmatic here because the fact is people do need clothes they will buy more clothes than they need so how can you encourage them to make to make a difference to where we are now even if we just start by saying okay we can&#39;t change everything overnight and that&#39;s unrealistic and all those reasons you just said about you know In Crowd and status and and self-expression I mean I love fashion for that reason for me it&#39;s a part art form and part tribal it&#39;s you know fascinating um but the fact is if we can make everyone behave differently not to damage businesses as I&#39;ve said but to actually just make even if they make 5 15 you know 20 difference to the way they consume that&#39;s significant and it&#39;s interesting once you start them and I I did a big project where um we talked about plastic and bathrooms and said you know if you just start with your bathroom and think about how you you know how you take shampoo you know every time you take another plastic bottle of shampoo how about you have one you refill it and there&#39;s some really interesting Brands now where you can refill in fact the Milkman here you can leave out milk bottles and they will fill it with shampoo or conditioner or laundry liquid or you know so it&#39;s actually really cool so if we can make that um cool and fashionable and a good way to behave um we can make quite a big difference and if we just look at small incremental differences once you start it&#39;s about you go to the gym if you start going to the gym you actually then start eating better and it&#39;s sort of it&#39;s it&#39;s quite effective so I think that&#39;s not bite of more than we can chew that&#39;s just try and make some differences and try and make people think differently it leads to all sorts of good things so I&#39;m quite a believer in this idea of incrementalism partly because I spent so much of my career tracking learning curves tracking the building of those Supply chains and there are these tipping points where things take off and I guess the question is whether those small things though will add up to a sufficient enough change and you know you talk about the shampoo bottles and so on you know I&#39;m reminded of these hotels that say you know we&#39;re very sustainable you know um only we&#39;ll only replace the towels if you put them in the bath and we and we don&#39;t use little bottles we use bigger bottles and then you know you arrive and there they are with their sort of um you know their their gas heaters heating up the entire patio outside the hotel um with with gay abandon they just you know clearly have no clue about real deep sustainability and the whole idea of traveling is probably sort of bad for the planet inherently I know but listen we have to be realistic because if we get to stage where we make everyone feel so guilty that they then they&#39;ll just they&#39;ll just zone out right and so and the fact is people you know need to live and need to do what they need to do let&#39;s just try and and I know there&#39;s a massive crisis don&#39;t get me wrong I&#39;m not belittling that but we&#39;re not going to get people to go from to from A to Z in one go we have to just encourage and Inspire and use our platforms and do whatever we can to make as much difference as we can and I I think I mean one of the things I would love to do that I think could be significant in fashion is I would love there to be a sort of traffic light system in the way that there is on food you know you get calories and nutrition and you get you know absolute Clarity of of um of of supply chain and sort of ingredients I would love in fashion if you&#39;re going to buy a t-shirt that it had a red or a green or an amber light on it in terms of actually how well is this source and I think that if we could introduce that profession that&#39;ll be really helpful because in the same way that I said about leather there&#39;s so much misconception around um leather because you know people talk about it as it&#39;s you know the worst thing ever and it&#39;s really not actually in many cases it&#39;s actually the most sensible and I always talk about sense common sense it&#39;s one of my big sort of Northern stars but it&#39;s actually the most sensible and responsible routes and certainly vegan leather is is not so I think if there was a way of showing this is good leather this is actually from a regenerative Farm it&#39;s you know locally sourced sensible and responsibly turned um and versus leather that actually is incurring deforestation and you know making the soil like a desert um you know you you need to know the difference because actually otherwise it&#39;s just it&#39;s just one size fits all and it&#39;s very confusing for the consumer so I think that that would be helpful so and I also believe that I think we need a bit of sort of you know Carbon tax on products actually unfortunately eventually as well so it&#39;s going to be all sorts of things we need to do but um if if that combination can can lead to a change in Behavior um that&#39;s that&#39;s it that&#39;s um imperative in my view so I&#39;m as you&#39;re talking about you know traffic light system you know red orange green uh I&#39;m a data guy and I&#39;m thinking about how you would do that also for carbon tax you&#39;ve got to have really robust data and the problem with this is It&#39;s just incredibly complicated if you have red orange green red Amber green and you know one person is going to care about um you know Carbon one person is going to care about recycling one person is going to care about um beetles one person has just read something about methane emissions one person is worrying more about Labor and labor conditions and fairness uh somebody else is worrying about heavy metals and it just becomes the trade-offs and the complexities to boil things down to Red Amber green I&#39;m not sure it&#39;s doable I I I&#39;m scared by that that&#39;s the answer yeah and I also think it&#39;s incredible it&#39;s a huge burden for business so it I sort of raise it as a you know could it just simply be that you have to say how much carbon this product has has you know there&#39;s a carbon impact for example so I don&#39;t know the answer yet but I I do think that actually if the customer had some some you know transparency that was that was regulated and that was consistent it would help people make informed decisions I think it&#39;s very difficult to Consumer honestly I&#39;d say I think we&#39;re not very sophisticated in in that way um and you know you data guys will have to work out how we do it and how we make it doable and how it doesn&#39;t become too burdensome for business because you know that&#39;s that&#39;s expensive but I I do think that and you know right now with cost of living and everything people are you know juggling and we do need to keep people employed I also really think that&#39;s a really important thing to balance we need businesses to be healthy right now um but I think that if we could crack that in a way and maybe it&#39;s just starting with one aspect it wouldn&#39;t be perfect and then it gets better and better I&#39;m sure there are a lot of discussions you know when they introduced all the the um the labeling that was required on food but I sort of feel it&#39;s you know people forget by the way that fashion comes from farms that it&#39;s grown it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s very interesting people just when you say that to people they just kind of look at you and it&#39;s a weird way but everything that we wear and carry comes from a farm that is grown so I think it&#39;s not wrong that we treat fashion in the same way that we treat food well unless it comes from petrochemicals technically because a lot of the plastic uh a lot of the synthetic fabrics do yeah behind this idea of labeling there is a thesis that people act on information and I slightly worry about that because you know frankly you&#39;ve probably got clients who think of and I&#39;m going to pick it up on my next trip to New York or to Miami and they&#39;re going to fly and everybody knows yeah we&#39;ve told people how many times yeah the single worst thing you can do is jump on an airplane what do people do jump on an airplane and yeah so at some point the information alone I think that what you talk about the brand and its translation into behavior is probably more yeah where the speak Norton lies rather than just my data businesses right yeah but I think it&#39;s where I mean I&#39;m throwing it out there just because again in the same way I don&#39;t know the answers but you know if you throw it out to clever people through a podcast someone might go actually what we could do is um and um and I I think it&#39;s worth chucking these things out we all need to kind of grab the bits we think we can make a difference with um but I I just know as a customer that I would like to know if I&#39;m in you know I don&#39;t know Regent Street buying something I&#39;d like to know how far it&#39;s traveled I know how far I&#39;ve traveled so I can you know I I hopefully I can be sensible about that but just some facts and I think it would help people make informed decisions I think it&#39;s a sort of missing link so I&#39;m not saying it&#39;s simple but I think there&#39;s something there that that would be really helpful and of course I mean you know responsibility and travel and it&#39;s just such a hard one to to you know I mean the only responsible way to behave is pretty much to stay at home and grow your vegetables outside your window and not move anywhere and that&#39;s a bit unrealistic isn&#39;t it as we discussed once before I also think it&#39;s not just that that is unrealistic it is also that it won&#39;t actually avert disaster because we&#39;ll just slow down the economy but we&#39;re not going it&#39;s only through the innovations that we&#39;ll actually turn the super tanker and end up somewhere else rather than the same destination but just a bit slower so I think the Innovation is all about I want to come back to one final I don&#39;t know if you&#39;d consider this your fifth sort of major uh sustainability project but you&#39;ve sort of returned to your roots in Pond Street and you&#39;re creating um this almost a complete experience between the different sort of uh Anya hindmarsh things that you can do activities shops and so on um is that the sort of next embodiment of of the sustainable experience rather than thinking of it as a product and I think local well so yes I mean it&#39;s it&#39;s a long story but localization is interesting to me we&#39;ve opened this what we call a village which is sort of six doors and a cafe and we used to have sort of 65 stores around the world and and I very much wanted to actually bring it back to Roots it&#39;s a longer story tied into me buying my business back and so on so there&#39;s several different threads to it but I think that localization thing is important and I also do agree that experience over things is is very um it&#39;s kind of what I want actually I I&#39;ve got too many things and obviously I know I make things and sell things but I I&#39;m naturally being drawn towards selling experiences coupled with things sometimes and sometimes not and you know the very fact that we&#39;ve got 150 people queuing from nine o&#39;clock in the morning every day outside a shop in Pond Street to um currently buy ice cream very unusual ice cream I suppose is Testament to the fact that I think that is that&#39;s actually what people want um I think we all have too much stuff I think we all feel guilty about it it&#39;s quite suffocating it&#39;s it&#39;s a huge amount of money and memories are very precious no one never take your memories from you so I think there is a movement towards that and I think that&#39;s very exciting so I did do some Market Research into the ice cream flavors as well and I believe I understand one of them is ketchup flavor which um which played to us somewhat um well basically the grown-ups thought it was awful and the kids thought it was great fun but interestingly you&#39;ll find that when you taste it the grown-ups think it&#39;s rather delicious and the kids find it not quite sweet enough um so it&#39;s been working with this amazing um Devon um small batch ice cream maker we&#39;ve come up with these flavors which are very unusual so for example soy sauce uh which is you know actually a toasted sesame quite Umami delicious quite sophisticated flavor there&#39;s Branston pickle which is you know as you imagine it&#39;s got lots of sort of fruits and um there&#39;s uh digestive biscuit lemon curd there&#39;s um right beans all sorts of amazing flavors but it&#39;s a fun experience because it&#39;s just unlikely um and I think you know your point about experience over things is is really is another way to solve this problem it&#39;s going to be lots and lots of things coming together but I also I&#39;m with you that I think is going to be some massive R and D into some incredible technology discovery that is really going to help us here because I&#39;m kind of worried that we&#39;re running out of time frankly so everything we need to do we should but I think we need some we need the economy the economy to be sound so we can afford the Big R D and just on your Pond Street on the village do you also um focus on the material the building materials because you know you&#39;re you&#39;re stripping out and you&#39;re renovating stores you&#39;ve been doing that for your your whole career since your first store that you opened in Pond Street um do you now look at the circularity of absolutely everything in the store the glass the the the when they lay the floor slab the Furnishings everything or is that kind of a next Frontier I think this is by the way so interesting because when we had 65 stores you know we had a design Bible and you go into a store and you strip it all out and all that lovely the previous sort of incumbent it all went and you put in your you know and you were sourcing stuff and it&#39;s just so disgusting um and actually that&#39;s why I wanted Less stores I want to bring it right down and actually what we&#39;re working with is what&#39;s there so you know those are beautiful old very old shops and yes there&#39;s an element of new but we try and Source it locally but actually you need to put in shop fits that work that you can change and alter and what we were doing prior to to the Village also is we were doing these very big shows during Fashion Week where you know we were put on these massive sets proper huge like sort of theater level sets for what is essentially nine minutes of show yes admittedly that the kind of content would distribute around the world but that felt so wasteful even if we recycle materials afterwards it just felt wasteful in every respect so what&#39;s lovely about the village for us is it replaces not only the infrastructure of stores around the world because actually we now get um people really engaging locally and then taking a sort of digital experience out but we also it replaces those in my view quite wasteful shows there&#39;s so many fashion shows that tour the world and it just feels very um inappropriate really so it&#39;s rather nice that we get all this creativity um locally and then we can we can distribute that digitally so Anna I wanted to be mean and sort of you know try to come out of this conversation and say well you know it&#39;s the fashion industry you know it&#39;s only got this much influence and people you know it&#39;s only for rich people and it doesn&#39;t do it and of course you&#39;ve you&#39;ve completely disarmed by every angle of attack and prove from that in fact what you&#39;re doing is far far more influential than anything that I could possibly do so uh I&#39;m I&#39;m humbled well I&#39;m humbled by your knowledge and the truth is we all learn from each other and I think it&#39;s really important that I mean my industry is a silly industry in many respects but actually employs a lot of people it communicates widely it has massive influence so it&#39;s just trying to use the bits of it that we can together with people like you and all your amazing experience and knowledge and all the people I work with the scientists and the in all the r d to kind of get it together ultimately we&#39;ve got to club together on this this is not about individuals it&#39;s about Collective actions and um I I still remain positive just because it&#39;s a scary situation right now but I still remain positive that we can make Miracles if we all pull together well hopefully this podcast and this YouTube uh video will get your message to a slightly different audience um a lot of policy makers a lot of investors listen to this a lot of you know the Civic Society leaders uh in sustainability and climate change probably already uh interacted with you and your brand and your thinking but hopefully there&#39;ll be some new audiences that have helped you to get to today and I just want to thank you for joining us it&#39;s been absolutely tremendous thank you I lost you a bit at the end but yes I just think the more we share all these problems and these thoughts rightly or wrongly openly um hopefully better will do thank you very much for your time today great pleasure chatting with you so that was andyahind March fashion designer entrepreneur and leading voice on sustainability if you&#39;ve enjoyed today&#39;s conversation please remember to like share and subscribe to cleaning up or leave us a review on your chosen podcast platform and if you want more from cleaning up sign up for our free newsletter at cleaning up dot live where you&#39;ll find our Archive of over 150 hours of conversation with extraordinary climate leaders and why not help someone else learn more about the Net Zero transition by introducing them to cleaning up cleaning up is brought to you by our lead supporter Capricorn Investment Group the Libre foundation and the gillardini foundation

[Music] thank you hello I&amp;#39;m Michael librake and this is cleaning up welcome to season 10. to help get the season off to a good start my guest this week is Anya hindmarch one of Britain&amp;#39;s most celebrated fashion designers and a leading voice in the industry on sustainability and you started a business in London in 1987 and has 16 stores worldwide as well as her own retail Village in Pond Street Chelsea with the launch of her I am not a plastic bag totes in 2007 she helped kick-start a Countrywide debate around single-use Plastics and this year Anya is collaborating with leading supermarkets again to prevent Plastics pollution in 2017 Anya was awarded a CBE and in 2019 she became a Greenpeace Ambassador please welcome Anya hind march to cleaning up before we start if you&amp;#39;re enjoying cleaning up please make sure that you like subscribe and leave a review that really helps other people to find us to make sure you never miss an episode subscribe to us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform and follow us on Twitter LinkedIn or Instagram to participate in the discussion also you can visit cleaningup.live to access over 160 hours of conversations with extraordinary climate leaders and you can subscribe to our free newsletter that&amp;#39;s cleaning up dot live cleaning up is brought to you by our lead supporter Capricorn Investment Group the Libre foundation and the gillardini foundation so Anya welcome to this first episode in season 10 of cleaning up this is a conversation I&amp;#39;ve really been looking forward to it&amp;#39;s so nice to be with you nice to see you Michael thank you for having me so the way we always start is I ask my guests to describe who they are in their own words because I&amp;#39;ve done a little intro but I&amp;#39;ve probably got all sorts of things wrong and haven&amp;#39;t given it the emphasis that you would give it so who are you it&amp;#39;s just like it depends day to day at the moment um I suppose I well first of all my my name is Ania hindmatch I&amp;#39;m I&amp;#39;m British even though I don&amp;#39;t sound totally British um and I am a I suppose a fashion uh designer I&amp;#39;m a CEO of a company of a brand called anyhow much um but I suppose in this context I&amp;#39;m a sort of slightly accidental um environmentalist in a way um and I spent much of my career rather by default has been devoted to projects that have been um about sort of I suppose using my platform to discuss um you know environmental issues and uh so so that&amp;#39;s become a loss of what I do but in my day-to-day I also make and sell um rather beautiful high-end leather goods and um and fashion accessories and we sell those um in many places all over the world so that&amp;#39;s what I do normally I&amp;#39;m also involved in the the Royal Marsden cancer charity as a trustee and a trustee on the Tate so I&amp;#39;ve done lots of things in the art world as well so you um you said you&amp;#39;re a designer you are also something of an of an icon um for your work on sustainability so I&amp;#39;ll confess I&amp;#39;m not your kind of traditional target market perhaps but I did do some research and I asked a number of people who actually are your target market and every single one of them owns some of your uh some of your products and and I asked one in particular I said why did you buy one of Anya hind March&amp;#39;s uh pieces and she said instantly she said sustainability she said sustainability that was the sell for her so uh how much does that resonate I mean is that Did you sort of hook the business to sustainability or was that the accident that you&amp;#39;re referring to when you call yourself an accidental sort of spokesperson it&amp;#39;s very very much an accident in a way because when I started my business when I was 18 so I started designing then and making and selling products to stores and then opening stores and opening stores all over the world so that&amp;#39;s my kind of Core Business um and it wasn&amp;#39;t until 2007 which sounds quite a long time ago but actually was quite a long time after I had started my business I&amp;#39;m 55 now um that um we were approached um to uh I suppose amplify the message of a book that had just come out which was trying to um encourage people not to use single-use plastic um and that really started a project which which led to four projects really and I&amp;#39;m hoping we can talk about them individually but the first project was called I&amp;#39;m not a plastic bag that which led on to a project called I am a plastic bag which then LED on to a project called Return To Nature which then LED on to a project called Universal bag so these four projects have sort of scanned right through um you know from 2007 to to sort of current um today um so so I very much fell into it and and and really I was sort of passionate about it from the get-go I should I should I should caveat this with my father as a Plastics was it well is a Plastics engineer so I&amp;#39;ve been brought up with plastic all my life it&amp;#39;s quite funny already given that so most of my career trying to to um to stop people using it but those those projects um it sort of started by accident but actually have become a real passion project for me um and I think I&amp;#39;m no expert I say that all the time and I&amp;#39;m far from perfect but what I do have in my own small way I suppose as a sort of a voice which you get in fashion fashionism very powerful Communicator you know it&amp;#39;s very viral and it&amp;#39;s amazing that fashion can make you wear your hair in one way one year and you know short trousers one minute and long trousers the next and and really persuade you to behave differently and I think that&amp;#39;s what excites me about um the sort of place I have if you like to talk in this world from really with very little experience certainly when I started but with a voice to hopefully take people in a very honest open and and perhaps easily understandable way and that was why I was so much looking forward to this other than it&amp;#39;s always a pleasure to chat with you um but um you know I kind of know how businesses work you know I&amp;#39;ve built successful businesses I&amp;#39;ve studied business uh the things that I&amp;#39;ve done well have all been business to business I&amp;#39;ve tried two business to Consumer businesses and they both failed so I don&amp;#39;t have that kind of what the Germans would call the fingerspitz and gefu you know the fingertip feeling for how do you actually sort of I don&amp;#39;t want to say manipulate but how do you change people&amp;#39;s behaviors and I want to come back to that and I think that is pretty much at the heart of what we&amp;#39;re going to talk about but just to get the sort of Bio piece a little bit fleshed out how many years was it between you famously going to Italy um spotting a trend starting to get some bags made and starting your business aged I think 18 19 um and 2007 I&amp;#39;m not trying to ask you how old you are and I&amp;#39;ll steer clear of that so give us a kind of rough number not an exactly so well I&amp;#39;m 55 now I started my business when I was 18 and I launched so the business started in 1987 and the the first project we did um environmental project we did was in 2007. so quite a lot of years later and obviously when you&amp;#39;re 18 there&amp;#39;s a few years at your kitchen table trying to work out what you&amp;#39;re doing and finding suppliers and dealing with all the things that business throws at you but so it was quite a long time and very much my business is a fashion business that has um you know like all businesses in my opinion now has to have at the heart of it you know a sort of responsible I&amp;#39;m so bored of the word sustainable but a responsible attitude to its Supply chains and I think that you know whilst it&amp;#39;s very difficult and I&amp;#39;m sure we&amp;#39;ll talk about the elephant in the room how do you square that Circle of commerciality with being responsible um and you know so it&amp;#39;s very hard to be perfect but I think you you need to take people on that Journey people people do care they often don&amp;#39;t care enough but they do care so that&amp;#39;s the sort of time scale and um and and you know there&amp;#39;s been these four specific projects which I just did some mental arithmetic there which was it&amp;#39;s about 15 years that you were in fashion before something around that I mean 15 20 years that you were doing fashion and you were really not doing these environmental projects were you feeling I&amp;#39;m very interested did you feel that kind of Disconnect between presumably you were already concerned about those issues or were you just blind to them no I wasn&amp;#39;t I was I wasn&amp;#39;t blind and actually when so with the very first project was um I&amp;#39;m not a plastic bag and happened because someone approached us who&amp;#39;d written a book which was um called um uh save that changed the world for a fiver the book was five pounds and in the book there were 40 actions of how to behave in a more responsible way and the first action in this book was wherever possible refused plastic bags and they came to us because I kind of knew the person in directly and they said would you help us amplify the message of this book particularly around the plastic bags and I have one of those light bulb moments because I had been feeling um well I&amp;#39;ve been hearing the word you know the environment you know global warming and and and you know lots of the been bits of of um of kind of communication that has come into my sphere and I was thinking what could I do as an individual and it was quite hard I think we all felt a bit hopeless at that point um and so I suddenly realized actually I could use my platform of um bags and being a sort of spokesperson for bags as you said I&amp;#39;d already had 15 years of sort of working in that sphere so I had a voice for that and um and I felt I could actually sort of if you like sort of mimic the what was called the it bag formula in those days it was a stupid idea but there was a huge sort of issue with um very fashionable bags the right people wearing them a sort of scarcity of supply and that becomes quite sort of exciting and and um and sort of viral and and people get quite you know quite excited about that so I thought if I could produce a bag that was for five pounds mimicking the book of change the world for a fiver work with supermarkets because I really wanted to go to the coal phase where most of the sort of single-use plastic was sort of coming from uh or certainly distributed or a lot of it um and actually therefore you know we were making handbags that were many hundreds of pounds so offering one of our bags designed by us for five pounds was quite intoxicating for the customer and the aim was awareness it was it was very simple the aim was just look again so we designed actually a cotton bag which in fact I looked back on it now it wasn&amp;#39;t even sort of fair trade cotton or organic cotton and you know all these things you learn as you go and we launched it actually very initially with a few very very high fashion stores so you know Colette and Paris and some really kind of cool stores limited amounts sold out immediately and then we launched it with Sainsbury&amp;#39;s who an incredibly Brave partner actually we&amp;#39;ve just partnered with them again amongst other supermarkets because you know that&amp;#39;s quite a tricky place for them to sit you know they&amp;#39;re offering something as an alternative but they were still offering the single-use plastic and they uh launched it in their stores I mean just to give you a sort of sense of the madness 80 000 people queued on launch day to across the country to buy one of the bags it became an absolute crazy sort of mad sensation um but what it did was was gain a huge amount of traction and coverage and press and it was the front page of many newspapers um we then took it around the world and it just got more and more and more crazy um so it did absolutely communicate I think one of my proudest things was the fact that I saw lots and lots of copies of these bags and normally obviously as a designer you don&amp;#39;t want copies but they were actually translating it into Mandarin and into Italian and into French and and therefore communicating the message um even further the other thing that people mention when I say that I&amp;#39;m going to be talking to you on cleaning up is the sense of humor the sort of cheekiness you know I&amp;#39;m not a plastic bag and you&amp;#39;ve done you&amp;#39;ve done beer bag as well separately and I think that was to do with your cancer uh work and uh uh if I&amp;#39;m not wrong and then you but then I am a blastic and there&amp;#39;s this kind of and then just the the icon the iconography is the the The Cheeky face the eyes the way you know the look The Brand um that use of humor has been pretty sort of central to what you do as well has it not well I think the thing is in in the world of of um environmental work and sustainability so many you know brilliant and knowledgeable scientists but they tend to lose the audience of of the sort of you know the the normal um sort of customer and um layperson so I think that cutting through that with a bit of humor which makes it a bit more engaging and perhaps just stats and facts and actually taking people on that Journey with the the failures and this of open sourcing and the you know and I was very open for example when we did that first project even I didn&amp;#39;t know about you know how you know pollution and how thirsty the cotton crop is for example um and actually explaining sort of saying oh I got that wrong and now I&amp;#39;ve learned so I think just taking people on the journey with humor and kind of quite bite-sized and easy to kind of grasp communication is actually quite important to changing people&amp;#39;s behavior so and perhaps we can add that through a rather sort of fashion or perhaps sort of slightly humorous um uh sort of um you know method so that&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s why but I think it&amp;#39;s also what we do we tend we don&amp;#39;t take life too seriously and what we do and there&amp;#39;s not that many people in the kind of Net Zero climate change you know just stop oil Extinction Rebellion or at the EU you know developing policy or working on the inflation reduction act in the US I mean they&amp;#39;re not sort of they&amp;#39;re not getting the message across by wisecracking that&amp;#39;s for sure well I think it&amp;#39;s interesting isn&amp;#39;t it because I think it can be I think you need to do all things it&amp;#39;s so important this you know this crisis that actually we need to do all things we need to shock and we need to probably be a bit annoying um but there are other groups who also need to take people on the journey and I said this could be really fun or by the way this is a much nicer way to do a better thing and so I think we&amp;#39;ve always gone in that this is a much nicer way to do a better thing at root and I&amp;#39;m not dissing other approaches because probably you need all of them because if it&amp;#39;s a bit annoying too occasionally perhaps that actually does um also make people change their behavior because they want to avoid issues but um our approach has been one of actually you know come with us we&amp;#39;ll show you a nicer way to do it we&amp;#39;ll inspire you this is a beautiful thing how about wear this and actually it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s a it&amp;#39;s a better way of moving your stuff around so that&amp;#39;s been our approach and it&amp;#39;s not saying it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s a rise approach and it shouldn&amp;#39;t be the only approach but it&amp;#39;s been one that&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s actually I think brought people on the journey in a positive way I think we tend to be well I tend to be quite a positive person um and I think that will be a much more natural way for us to communicate and so I think it&amp;#39;s important in the mix honestly absolutely there&amp;#39;s there are different roles and different communication styles that are appropriate for each I want to come back to some of the kind of trade-offs and some of the conundrums but first take us through you&amp;#39;ve got those four projects I mean the first one I&amp;#39;m not a plastic bag and then they&amp;#39;re these kind of almost riots uh as people queue and they&amp;#39;re desperate to get hold of this what was the what was the journey then where did you go from there and you know we&amp;#39;ll come back to the the ideas that you&amp;#39;ve already put out there of not being perfect first time and learning and how you communicate changing Behavior but what was the actual Journey what were the what were the steps so after that first project which was very much a baptism of fire and you know not-for-profit and just a sort of good thing to do we we it made a difference actually so whilst um it had this incredible reaction I mean you know I mean 30 people went to hospital in Taiwan to give you a sense of you know obviously not proud of that we stopped the projects immediately after that but it just got out of control it we&amp;#39;re absolutely insane all around the world so it got lots of attention the message was carried further as I suggested it was it then got some negative attention through the sort of lack of organic cotton um but it was it was great and actually the the figures from the British retail Consortium I think were that the plastic bag consumption levels in the UK pre the project for something like 10 billion and it went down to six in a year so it didn&amp;#39;t it did have a very real impact which was fantastic and as a consequence and people started imposing tax on carrier buys and so on so that was great and we went back to some of our day jobs and thought we&amp;#39;d have done our bit there um we&amp;#39;d obviously been involved in lots of things along the way and and but actually it wasn&amp;#39;t until 2020 when I just I looked around and someone told me the stat that I think there&amp;#39;s something like eight billion tons of plastic on the planet right now and it just I just thought you know this project is so not done even though awareness has happened that that had done and I think our project contributed to that but actually we&amp;#39;re not done on this and obviously the the the issue moved on to circularity there&amp;#39;s all this plastic on the planet how can we keep it out of landfill and make it and reuse it so um so really um we you know really wanted to work back into the project but actually you know rather than I am not a first-it bag actually I am a plastic bag so how could we reuse what&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s around and make something beautiful so we we sort of delved into that project went two years on R D actually very expensive and complicated because actually it was sort of early into making um you know pet plastic to recycle it to Source it to work out how to use it every every bolt of fabric when it first arrived was a different width and and weight and you know dealt differently with the the way that we me man handled it which made the production incredibly complicated so it was already two years of hell in fact even as we launched it we were worried that actually it was it was quite fraught with difficulty one of the things that happened also we developed a fabric which is recycled pet which behaved so much like a beautiful cotton canvas drill that it actually got dirty which actually wasn&amp;#39;t very you know we have to make things that our customers want as it doesn&amp;#39;t work so we ended up putting a coating on it like you might on a cotton canvas but obviously we wanted that to be recycled as well and we managed to find um PVB which is actually the plastic that is between windscreens that holds the glass together so it doesn&amp;#39;t smash and to repurpose that and save it from landfill and actually use that as a coating and again that was very different because obviously different windscreens and different temperatures and it was really quite a head fry getting the whole thing done but anyway we we got there and um that actually also made me think quite a lot about leather um and so just to say also that when we launched that project we we actually slightly as part protest and part art installation closed all of our stores all of our London Stores um and actually filled them took all the product out and filled the stores to the brim to the ceiling with 90 000 used plastic bottles to connect people to what it looks like which I think is something like six minutes of landfill because I think also part of the communication pieces is people need immediate bite-sized attention-grabbing messages and actually when you see six minutes of landfill and and we literally had lores we collected all these bottles ourselves which is probably why we all got covered in the process by the way we launched this in the in the in 2019 um but when you see a store fill it&amp;#39;s so disgusting and it&amp;#39;s so ridiculous and I always say that&amp;#39;s that wonderful that someone once said to me if you had to actually plant or bury everything that you take sort of waste in your own garden you&amp;#39;d actually just stop taking it you know you stop it at sauce and so actually seeing it there and actually being connected to it it&amp;#39;s one thing I care passionately about actually which is that we need to get children to visit landfill sites and we need to get children to to visit um recycling centers just to make them realize you know when you throw something away there is no way you know the thing we all know but anyway that project which was again incredibly powerful from a communication um point of view we toured it around the world we&amp;#39;ve done lots of projects and we filled up stores in in Japan and in Hong Kong with bottles we sort of really sort of made made a point um also made me think about leather because we we actually had thought about trimming the bag in a recycled leather at a time with the fact that the whole project was about recycling and when we dug into to leather recycled leather is basically the bits of all of leather mashed down and then remixed into some soup of plastic so actually recycle leather is not the answer we then looked of course at vegan leather which is just it&amp;#39;s just plastic it&amp;#39;s just you know what people used to refer to as some pleather in those days um and actually we started looking into leather because leather has such a bad name that I started looking into it again and realizing that leather actually is the most amazing material um so we we actually ended up using leather that was really really well sourced but the point of explaining this is it actually led me to the next project which was called uh Return To Nature because I then thought actually in waste is our in nature there is no waste in nature there&amp;#39;s no need for landfill you know you don&amp;#39;t see a dead dog in landfill do you it actually like an apple it falls from the tree it actually you know it biodegrades it composts it adds nutrients to the soil and it actually benefits soil health so could we actually make and you know I sort of set myself the question could I make a bag that would behave like nature so that actually the end of life if you actively composted it that it would actually break down and benefit soil Health leaving nothing nasty and actually nourishing the soil to support further growth so we set out on this project which was another two years of r d and by the way very expensive R D um and actually worked with a number of people and a huge amount of Trials to look at how you Source responsible leather and there&amp;#39;s a whole book in that subject um you know and that means it has to come because actually cattle are very good for soil as long as it&amp;#39;s a healthy you know regenerative Farm how you then turn leather responsibly so we work with a number of amazing people that I sort of discovered and sort of quite an iterative process really through the project so people who where you can Source skins that have you know have have the animals with the best animal welfare and we work as an incredible company um called scan hide working with amazing um experts in tanning Hoffman&amp;#39;s and finishing finding a way to turn the leather using no heavy metals no Chrome no no nasty stuff basically so that it left nothing in the soil when it broke down so we actually worked with zeolite which is actually a form of clay to naturally turn the skins and then finishing the leather it&amp;#39;s so interesting when you dig into leather finishing pretty much all leather these days is coated and plastic a thin film of PVC so the reason you don&amp;#39;t have to polish your shoes anymore as we used to when we were children is because actually they have this sort of you know bulletproof coating of plastic on the outside and the reason you never your trainers stay white and get don&amp;#39;t get sort of dark with rain is because they&amp;#39;re basically leather with a lot of plastic coating on them so it&amp;#39;s quite horrifying when you think about it so we set out to try and find a different way to protect the leather because if you don&amp;#39;t protect the leather you need to find a way to have a barrier because otherwise it gets very wet and and breaks down immediately so um we found this amazing people it&amp;#39;s a company called evolved by Nature you have this product which is activated silk so essentially it&amp;#39;s liquid silk because actually silk is one of the best natural polymers actually it&amp;#39;s very interesting I mean Nature has it all Nature has things that do this and that it&amp;#39;s all part of a circular economy essentially so it it naturally breaks down so we work with them to to find a way to have the finishing of the leather the protection the final barrier coating um made out of liquid silk um and in fact we needed a tiny Top-Up of wax in the end we actually got to the stage where we&amp;#39;re just about to launch this beautiful product we&amp;#39;ve passed all the tests it did biodegrade it did compost and I went out in severe rain and in severe rain just testing the product the product ended up with a bit of chickenpox because the the water was getting through the the silk so we ended up finding this amazing family in the UK you have terrible allergies so they had to remake all the natural products used in the house without any nasties in it and we they had this one wax that we use as the final belt and braces coating on the top of the liquid the the liquid silk um to actually stop the rain getting in so it was such an amazing journey and and we worked obviously all the way through testing this and externally auditing it to make sure that we knew it would actually biodegrade and compost and so it was independently tested but we had a lovely moment at the very end where um we had the compost that had the leather in it and we grew a control set of plants and another set of plants to test alongside and the control set without our compost delivered plants that grew were 20 shorter so our little compost delivered our little plants which were 20 stronger um with our with our leather composted into it so it was an amazing moment so to show really that you can produce beautiful fashion products that are very sophisticated customer would love um that are that are manageable to make and actually that could never end up in landfill so that was I mean it&amp;#39;s a slightly academic project but I really wanted to prove that we still sell that product very well today um and and it was an amazing very expensive but great r d Journey which I think Sparks I hope a lot of conversations in the way that anyone is is doing product development and um and new product development in fashion so at a garden center near you you&amp;#39;ll now be able to buy one of your handbags as the most expensive fertilizer in the world because never mind the handbagging it actually delivers 20 more plant growth I think we do have a business in compost don&amp;#39;t you think I think that&amp;#39;s the way for compost by the way is the most fascinating subject but anyway we won&amp;#39;t get to that now but it it&amp;#39;s very very interesting so people got scared thinking that the bags might sort of actually break down and compost and sort of um or break down uh on their shoulder but you know you have to actively put it with compost but no it&amp;#39;s a really interesting project and um and I think you know sorts of conversations what I find fascinating about those stories is that you have actually you&amp;#39;ve done you you&amp;#39;ve focused on the research because that&amp;#39;s the bit that you see and it&amp;#39;s the bit that you have to pay for but you&amp;#39;re also developing a supply chain because there&amp;#39;s all these companies out there that that are doing bits that individually don&amp;#39;t add up to you know a lot but actually they are because it&amp;#39;s an interesting question about the circular economy I think a lot of people think that the circular economy happens within one company so you&amp;#39;ve got recycling which everybody knows is a sort of chain like a it&amp;#39;s a relay race a baton race but circularity I think a lot of people think it&amp;#39;s about one company that has to be circular but it&amp;#39;s not it is actually still a bat on race it&amp;#39;s still a supply chain and there&amp;#39;s still all sorts of elements to it and that&amp;#39;s what was so exciting about this project actually and actually in preparation for this call I listened actually we did I did a I interviewed all the people involved all those individual Partners all of whom we discovered you know by speaking and researching and so on and some failed and some did and we put them all together on a call actually I listened to the I did a sort of interview with all of them because it was such a really exciting moment when we finally got that little part plant growth you know that was the final exam result if you like of all the work and they&amp;#39;re all really interesting people and I think it&amp;#39;s joining those dots and having projects you can pull together all those experts and pull it together for a result is really exciting I think the most important thing then is to share that very openly and that&amp;#39;s the one thing I&amp;#39;m passionate about because normally in business you you know you spent all this time researching and finding your your trusted supply chain and you guard it with your life and I think one of the big shifts actually in in business now is transparency and it&amp;#39;s very hard because it hurts a bit as a you know when you put a lot of money and effort and resource into it but I feel that&amp;#39;s the one thing that we really need to do and I&amp;#39;ve tried to really kind of just push through that and just so and hence if you if you look on our website you see it&amp;#39;s very open on who did what and who and how we do it and everyone&amp;#39;s um you know part of the process so I think that transparency piece is a sort of more modern way of doing business and that is a sort of definite shift and I definitely see how that is part of the Whole Net Zero transition or not just Net Zero but environmental responsibility um because you know you now there will be no doubt conferences amongst those these have you know good suppliers the suppliers that get it they will sell a bit better they will meet each other there will be conferences there will be exhibitions there will be shows there will be sections in the fabric um annual Nessa in Germany or in Italy wherever it wherever and then you&amp;#39;re going to have to innovate more to stay ahead of that and that&amp;#39;s really how the kind of tipping points happen isn&amp;#39;t it it is it&amp;#39;s hard because you know we put two I think two and a half years for each of those projects I&amp;#39;ve spoken about in r d every time we tested another thickness of that liquidated silk versus the wax how did it affect the leather what did the rain do actually is the tannage a little different is the nausea like actually is the thickness of the natural material the skin different anyway every time we do that every time that had to go to the external Auditors to check is it actually compostable is it actually biodegrading is it meeting the requirements it was another three thousand pounds we did I cannot tell you how much money we kept sort of you know applying into this these projects so it&amp;#39;s quite hard so then can I go guys this is what we did and then people can jump straight to the sort of you know the Chase and and produce products that have the same uh use your r d but I think it&amp;#39;s important I really it&amp;#39;s the one thing that I&amp;#39;ve I&amp;#39;ve I&amp;#39;ve sort of even though it&amp;#39;s commercially a little bit kind of you know hurts a little bit I think it&amp;#39;s key and that&amp;#39;s why I think also if you&amp;#39;re very open and honest about what you&amp;#39;ve done and share the journey with people people also they have a bit of loyalty and respect for for your brand because you&amp;#39;re you&amp;#39;re going out on a limb you&amp;#39;re putting your money where your mouth is and you&amp;#39;re taking them on a very honest journey I think I think that&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s well received by your customers so that I think is the shift actually with this especially with the Next Generation they they they um they repay you if you like for the pain and I think that&amp;#39;s why they&amp;#39;re very loyal to a lot of these Brands I think Patagonia is a great example of that where they&amp;#39;re very you know they&amp;#39;re very sort of front and center on on what they do and and share that journey and people are very loyal as a result so whilst it feels a bit sort of um uh you know it feels a bit counter-intuitive I think that actually it&amp;#39;s the right thing to do and actually interestingly the the customer does actually repay that loyalty they&amp;#39;re very loyal um and repay you back um so it&amp;#39;s interesting now and very clearly it has worked for you because as I say when I asked why buy a hind March bag then the answer was sustainability so people can copy the sustainability but they can&amp;#39;t copy necessarily I mean the brand is much harder to catch up with but so that&amp;#39;s talking about influencing the supply chain it&amp;#39;s a good point but this is going to interrupt you rather really apologies but just to that point it&amp;#39;s interesting because I I talk a lot about brand obviously because that&amp;#39;s what I do but I always think people talk about brand um as a sort of you know there&amp;#39;s all these sort of mantras and taglines and mission statements but actually brand is behavior isn&amp;#39;t it ultimately and I always think that actually um that&amp;#39;s all that matters that&amp;#39;s what people experience and that&amp;#39;s a patchwork of a thousand examples of touch points with with a company and a brand and their values actually are more important than anything so I I do think it&amp;#39;s um you know that&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s a very overused word brand but it&amp;#39;s actually a behavior that counts and actually I was going to switch to behavior um at exactly that point because I was going to make the I was going to acknowledge that you have influenced the supply chain and you have influenced your competitors because if they copy you then that is influence the behavior at the consumer of the consumer though um that you brought up um I I guess that I&amp;#39;m starting to sort of ask questions out okay this all sounds marvelous but what percentage of consumers and what percentage of their behavior are you really accessing because what you&amp;#39;ve done is tremendous but then the question is to what extent does it really kind of change the world or or have a have a large scale impact um not yet I think it&amp;#39;s fair to say but I think that what happens is that um if if I demand if my if I can make my customer interested in uh or make customers interested in buying the right thing then they demand that of their of where you know their their brand they&amp;#39;re buying from I think it also goes further up in supply chain because you know if if people I mean selfridges did a brilliant job where they just banned any Exotics very early on and um and have been very strict about what they&amp;#39;re buying as a consequence every supplier to salvages it&amp;#39;s only rushing around trying to find an alternative so they&amp;#39;re going to all their supply chains and kind of going can you produce something that doesn&amp;#39;t have x y and z in it so actually you can make a difference all the way out to supply chain um I think I mean you know the reality is also we need to keep businesses healthy and to be selling things because actually we all know that doing the right thing slips down anyone&amp;#39;s agenda if people are struggling cost of living and so on so you know there&amp;#39;s all of those those pushes and polls but I I do believe that even if it doesn&amp;#39;t have an immediate huge effect it it has a you know it is viral and and we have to do it anyway there&amp;#39;s no there&amp;#39;s no no options as far as I&amp;#39;m concerned but I I think you know all the projects we do make a difference they might just communicate they might change people&amp;#39;s behavior with you know to to reuse on plastic bags they might um make people think you know it might spark a Big Brand like Nike to go and actually could we make a product that can never end up in landfill I mean that would be a great result and I hope it actually also makes my customers like our brand and buy our product more and I mean it actually led to the the fourth project that that I&amp;#39;ve sort of worked on more recently which I wanted to go back to the supermarkets because you know I think ultimately that&amp;#39;s probably where I can have the most effect and I think that that sort of magic thing of someone who normally sells something in a very expensive price point and and making it very accessible to widely there&amp;#39;s a magic to that which can have quite a quite a an impactful um benefit so we we launched this thing called Universal bag where we wanted to work with all the supermarkets which is quite an ambitious project and I I do believe in that um you know Eco not ego thing and um you know going to therefore that we&amp;#39;ve worked with Sainsbury&amp;#39;s waitrose uh We&amp;#39;ve launched Co-op we&amp;#39;ve just launched Tesco um and and many one time which was launch and which haven&amp;#39;t yet launched I don&amp;#39;t put my foot in it but we&amp;#39;re working across not only the UK but also across the world which is launched in Hong Kong just launched in Japan we&amp;#39;re just talking to every country across huge Supermarket players um to launch a bag that is um fully made from recycled 100 recycled materials um that is um also guaranteed for 10 years it I suppose that the the way to explain it is that bags for life are not for life and actually that it&amp;#39;s not working and it&amp;#39;s ending up apparently I think people take a bag for life every two weeks so clearly it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s broken and you see them sitting in hedgerows and it&amp;#39;s a disaster and as a result people are making heavier thicker plastic to last which is not being used for long enough periods so um we wanted to try and tackle that problem and the the result is a bag therefore that is is is last 10 years is fully recycled has a very clever recycle available sort of element mechanism to it which is there&amp;#39;s a pocket inside and at the end of life hopefully after 10 years or more you would fold it back into the pocket and it has a name and address free post address and you just put it in any post box and it comes back locally to be recycled locally but more than anything as well it actually is inspiring people because it&amp;#39;s a nice bag which many of the bags for life are not it&amp;#39;s inspiring people to want to use something for a longer period of time so whether they&amp;#39;re using it for the you know the picnic at school or their kids sports stuff or whether they&amp;#39;re using it as I was to Lug stuff from you know the the car to the to the house or food or whatever it is um it&amp;#39;s it inspires this reuse attitude so we&amp;#39;ve really launched all the supermarkets and again it&amp;#39;s been a massive success this is meant to be a permanent project and it&amp;#39;s having quite significant um reach actually and engagement so again I think it&amp;#39;s doing it&amp;#39;s doing lots of different things but but taking it very much too if you liked the masses and that resonates because I started I tried to use bags for life and I&amp;#39;ve got to the point where I realized that they weigh sort of 20 times as much and I only use them five times and then something you know and so it&amp;#39;s clearly not the solution so that&amp;#39;s a great project but I want to come back to this business about the extent to which you can change the consumer behavior um and um the bag your bag that&amp;#39;s got the liquid silk requires more care than the equivalent of spraying with plastic leather bag and you know are you finding people sort of you know happily doing that or do some people say well I don&amp;#39;t want to be polishing my bag I don&amp;#39;t didn&amp;#39;t enjoy polishing my shoes when I was a kid why would I enjoy polishing a bag and and you know how can you really take not just a few people who really love the idea and love what you&amp;#39;re doing but can you take can you take everybody with you on that sort of Journey I think you can with the right communication it becomes a badge of honor I mean I was talking to someone this morning about ink pens full enough because you know we used to all be given an ink pen for our 21st birthday and I you know was so excited to get the ink pen of my dreams and now everyone is using you know just disposable pens and pencils and it&amp;#39;s shocking if you think about it and it gets you know as bad as water bottles really um so we need to make it a beautiful thing that you enjoy refilling your ink pen you enjoy the beauty of a you know the craftsmanship of an ink pen and it becomes something that&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s cool because I think this is where fashion has a a very big part to play that if someone you really admire is carrying a beautiful ink pen and you know a really nice reusable bottle it&amp;#39;s you know you want to be like them and we&amp;#39;ve seen how fashion works we see how it&amp;#39;s you know literally someone wears a pair of you know flares one minute and everyone&amp;#39;s suddenly copying them and doing that so it really can work um so I think it can have a massive benefit and answer your question I think it can it can deliver but the fashion industry there&amp;#39;s the fashion industry and there&amp;#39;s there&amp;#39;s fashion and the fashion industry are just clothing it&amp;#39;s 2.1 gigatons of carbon emissions it&amp;#39;s about four percent of all the emissions in the world and not that much of that probably comes from you know behind March bags or or Louis Vuitton you know the vast majority of it is just people who just need clothes and it&amp;#39;s you can call it fast fashion you can call it convenience you can call it people buying clothes for their kids and their kids then six months later or just you know grow out of it or it&amp;#39;s or it falls apart um is it realistic okay I you know I held up my pen when you were talking about the fountain pen because I think the pens need to be things of beauty so I agree with you but but that&amp;#39;s a minority sport you know most people are not they&amp;#39;re just not in a position I mean you know apart from the fact that that most people on this planet live you know in Asia and have relatively modest means and they&amp;#39;re not buying products that are of great beauty that will last 10 or 15 years they&amp;#39;re just trying to sort of I don&amp;#39;t want to say live hand to mouth you know hopefully the majority are beyond that but they&amp;#39;re not buying because of their sort of environmental uh credentials are they no but I think the huge and disgusting over consumption is not actually mostly because someone needs a new t-shirt unfortunately I think there&amp;#39;s many many too many t-shirts on the planet as it is um it&amp;#39;s because actually they&amp;#39;re driven because of fashion and and everyone else&amp;#39;s behavior that they need new they need to look a different way they need the latest so if you in fashion can influence that I think you can make a difference um and you know I&amp;#39;m realistic it&amp;#39;s very it&amp;#39;s not I&amp;#39;m as a woman person it&amp;#39;s not going to happen by me but I think if if you can you know and you do see it in these sort of absolute sort of Mega huge celebrities massive followings if they post something saying actually I&amp;#39;m going to wear this this dress I love this dress I&amp;#39;m gonna wear it it&amp;#39;s 40th time how cool is that you make that call frankly that&amp;#39;s a relief to everyone I think there&amp;#39;s over consumption there&amp;#39;s endless need to have new new is actually it&amp;#39;s disgusting and it&amp;#39;s expensive and it&amp;#39;s exhausting for everyone so we need to buy less and buy better you know that is and we need to rent and we need to buy second hand my kids now buy all their clothes second hand they barely buy anything new so that is absolutely a trend amongst their age group so I actually think that we can make a real difference actually and I think fashion has a big part to play and because it&amp;#39;s actually unsustainable frankly for people&amp;#39;s pockets to keep buying you so I think you&amp;#39;ve lived in a slightly different way but you have got influencers that are reusing and they become they come under intense scrutiny uh Princess K uh the ReUse oh you know did you wear that once before and uh and and so on and that can have quite an impact but it can also open up you know just the use of celebrities at all can also open up the trend of you know trying to be more responsible to it um you know calls it hypocrisy because the next thing that she does is jump on an airplane uh official for sure but I think though that um you know the idea of an influencer or um in fact celebrity the word brings me out and hives to a certain extent so but it&amp;#39;s about who who might influence and who is responsible to use to influence um but frankly even if it&amp;#39;s irresponsible and it makes a difference to a minority and it&amp;#39;s contradictory five minutes later if it makes a difference so what let&amp;#39;s use them yeah I really don&amp;#39;t care I&amp;#39;m not proud I I think we need to I think I mean how lovely was it in covid when you know you were sitting on a zoom call and not having to buy another dress because no one saw what you&amp;#39;re wearing below your waist anyway you know it actually was quite a relief I think this over consumption thing is is driving everyone to it&amp;#39;s crazy and even with my business hat on and trying to grow my business and being responsible to shareholders and so on as we have to do and by the way employing people who then have money to keep it at the top of their agenda so I&amp;#39;m I&amp;#39;m really defend economic success we need to make sure that&amp;#39;s really important because it helps it helps um us do good stuff in the environment even despite that I think we can actually make people buy fewer things if you&amp;#39;re going to buy seven t-shirts in a year actually buy three that are well sourced good cotton responsibly made so I think you can actually keep the same you know Revenue but actually just actually you know change the way that we do it so I think there&amp;#39;s ways through all of this it will take a long time and you chip aware to chip away at it but I really believe there is a solution that could make 20 difference I mean 20 difference would be significant right how do you deal with criticism that you&amp;#39;re kind of you&amp;#39;re almost trying to sort of sell your way to degrowth or your you know your that you&amp;#39;re maintaining a system which is fundamentally just unhealthy well degree if you&amp;#39;re talking from a business point of view so you&amp;#39;re talking about unhealthy from a business point of view I think what I just said is if you you know if you&amp;#39;re buying certain t-shirts is that what you&amp;#39;re saying so what I was thinking more was that the whole edifice of fashion and the way we use uh clothes to Signal status or or in crowdness or you know just the whole thing you&amp;#39;re actually propping up an industry and a cultural phenomenon which is just fundamentally bad for the planet cannot be cannot be made somehow good for the planet but one also has to be pragmatic here because the fact is people do need clothes they will buy more clothes than they need so how can you encourage them to make to make a difference to where we are now even if we just start by saying okay we can&amp;#39;t change everything overnight and that&amp;#39;s unrealistic and all those reasons you just said about you know In Crowd and status and and self-expression I mean I love fashion for that reason for me it&amp;#39;s a part art form and part tribal it&amp;#39;s you know fascinating um but the fact is if we can make everyone behave differently not to damage businesses as I&amp;#39;ve said but to actually just make even if they make 5 15 you know 20 difference to the way they consume that&amp;#39;s significant and it&amp;#39;s interesting once you start them and I I did a big project where um we talked about plastic and bathrooms and said you know if you just start with your bathroom and think about how you you know how you take shampoo you know every time you take another plastic bottle of shampoo how about you have one you refill it and there&amp;#39;s some really interesting Brands now where you can refill in fact the Milkman here you can leave out milk bottles and they will fill it with shampoo or conditioner or laundry liquid or you know so it&amp;#39;s actually really cool so if we can make that um cool and fashionable and a good way to behave um we can make quite a big difference and if we just look at small incremental differences once you start it&amp;#39;s about you go to the gym if you start going to the gym you actually then start eating better and it&amp;#39;s sort of it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s quite effective so I think that&amp;#39;s not bite of more than we can chew that&amp;#39;s just try and make some differences and try and make people think differently it leads to all sorts of good things so I&amp;#39;m quite a believer in this idea of incrementalism partly because I spent so much of my career tracking learning curves tracking the building of those Supply chains and there are these tipping points where things take off and I guess the question is whether those small things though will add up to a sufficient enough change and you know you talk about the shampoo bottles and so on you know I&amp;#39;m reminded of these hotels that say you know we&amp;#39;re very sustainable you know um only we&amp;#39;ll only replace the towels if you put them in the bath and we and we don&amp;#39;t use little bottles we use bigger bottles and then you know you arrive and there they are with their sort of um you know their their gas heaters heating up the entire patio outside the hotel um with with gay abandon they just you know clearly have no clue about real deep sustainability and the whole idea of traveling is probably sort of bad for the planet inherently I know but listen we have to be realistic because if we get to stage where we make everyone feel so guilty that they then they&amp;#39;ll just they&amp;#39;ll just zone out right and so and the fact is people you know need to live and need to do what they need to do let&amp;#39;s just try and and I know there&amp;#39;s a massive crisis don&amp;#39;t get me wrong I&amp;#39;m not belittling that but we&amp;#39;re not going to get people to go from to from A to Z in one go we have to just encourage and Inspire and use our platforms and do whatever we can to make as much difference as we can and I I think I mean one of the things I would love to do that I think could be significant in fashion is I would love there to be a sort of traffic light system in the way that there is on food you know you get calories and nutrition and you get you know absolute Clarity of of um of of supply chain and sort of ingredients I would love in fashion if you&amp;#39;re going to buy a t-shirt that it had a red or a green or an amber light on it in terms of actually how well is this source and I think that if we could introduce that profession that&amp;#39;ll be really helpful because in the same way that I said about leather there&amp;#39;s so much misconception around um leather because you know people talk about it as it&amp;#39;s you know the worst thing ever and it&amp;#39;s really not actually in many cases it&amp;#39;s actually the most sensible and I always talk about sense common sense it&amp;#39;s one of my big sort of Northern stars but it&amp;#39;s actually the most sensible and responsible routes and certainly vegan leather is is not so I think if there was a way of showing this is good leather this is actually from a regenerative Farm it&amp;#39;s you know locally sourced sensible and responsibly turned um and versus leather that actually is incurring deforestation and you know making the soil like a desert um you know you you need to know the difference because actually otherwise it&amp;#39;s just it&amp;#39;s just one size fits all and it&amp;#39;s very confusing for the consumer so I think that that would be helpful so and I also believe that I think we need a bit of sort of you know Carbon tax on products actually unfortunately eventually as well so it&amp;#39;s going to be all sorts of things we need to do but um if if that combination can can lead to a change in Behavior um that&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s it that&amp;#39;s um imperative in my view so I&amp;#39;m as you&amp;#39;re talking about you know traffic light system you know red orange green uh I&amp;#39;m a data guy and I&amp;#39;m thinking about how you would do that also for carbon tax you&amp;#39;ve got to have really robust data and the problem with this is It&amp;#39;s just incredibly complicated if you have red orange green red Amber green and you know one person is going to care about um you know Carbon one person is going to care about recycling one person is going to care about um beetles one person has just read something about methane emissions one person is worrying more about Labor and labor conditions and fairness uh somebody else is worrying about heavy metals and it just becomes the trade-offs and the complexities to boil things down to Red Amber green I&amp;#39;m not sure it&amp;#39;s doable I I I&amp;#39;m scared by that that&amp;#39;s the answer yeah and I also think it&amp;#39;s incredible it&amp;#39;s a huge burden for business so it I sort of raise it as a you know could it just simply be that you have to say how much carbon this product has has you know there&amp;#39;s a carbon impact for example so I don&amp;#39;t know the answer yet but I I do think that actually if the customer had some some you know transparency that was that was regulated and that was consistent it would help people make informed decisions I think it&amp;#39;s very difficult to Consumer honestly I&amp;#39;d say I think we&amp;#39;re not very sophisticated in in that way um and you know you data guys will have to work out how we do it and how we make it doable and how it doesn&amp;#39;t become too burdensome for business because you know that&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s expensive but I I do think that and you know right now with cost of living and everything people are you know juggling and we do need to keep people employed I also really think that&amp;#39;s a really important thing to balance we need businesses to be healthy right now um but I think that if we could crack that in a way and maybe it&amp;#39;s just starting with one aspect it wouldn&amp;#39;t be perfect and then it gets better and better I&amp;#39;m sure there are a lot of discussions you know when they introduced all the the um the labeling that was required on food but I sort of feel it&amp;#39;s you know people forget by the way that fashion comes from farms that it&amp;#39;s grown it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s very interesting people just when you say that to people they just kind of look at you and it&amp;#39;s a weird way but everything that we wear and carry comes from a farm that is grown so I think it&amp;#39;s not wrong that we treat fashion in the same way that we treat food well unless it comes from petrochemicals technically because a lot of the plastic uh a lot of the synthetic fabrics do yeah behind this idea of labeling there is a thesis that people act on information and I slightly worry about that because you know frankly you&amp;#39;ve probably got clients who think of and I&amp;#39;m going to pick it up on my next trip to New York or to Miami and they&amp;#39;re going to fly and everybody knows yeah we&amp;#39;ve told people how many times yeah the single worst thing you can do is jump on an airplane what do people do jump on an airplane and yeah so at some point the information alone I think that what you talk about the brand and its translation into behavior is probably more yeah where the speak Norton lies rather than just my data businesses right yeah but I think it&amp;#39;s where I mean I&amp;#39;m throwing it out there just because again in the same way I don&amp;#39;t know the answers but you know if you throw it out to clever people through a podcast someone might go actually what we could do is um and um and I I think it&amp;#39;s worth chucking these things out we all need to kind of grab the bits we think we can make a difference with um but I I just know as a customer that I would like to know if I&amp;#39;m in you know I don&amp;#39;t know Regent Street buying something I&amp;#39;d like to know how far it&amp;#39;s traveled I know how far I&amp;#39;ve traveled so I can you know I I hopefully I can be sensible about that but just some facts and I think it would help people make informed decisions I think it&amp;#39;s a sort of missing link so I&amp;#39;m not saying it&amp;#39;s simple but I think there&amp;#39;s something there that that would be really helpful and of course I mean you know responsibility and travel and it&amp;#39;s just such a hard one to to you know I mean the only responsible way to behave is pretty much to stay at home and grow your vegetables outside your window and not move anywhere and that&amp;#39;s a bit unrealistic isn&amp;#39;t it as we discussed once before I also think it&amp;#39;s not just that that is unrealistic it is also that it won&amp;#39;t actually avert disaster because we&amp;#39;ll just slow down the economy but we&amp;#39;re not going it&amp;#39;s only through the innovations that we&amp;#39;ll actually turn the super tanker and end up somewhere else rather than the same destination but just a bit slower so I think the Innovation is all about I want to come back to one final I don&amp;#39;t know if you&amp;#39;d consider this your fifth sort of major uh sustainability project but you&amp;#39;ve sort of returned to your roots in Pond Street and you&amp;#39;re creating um this almost a complete experience between the different sort of uh Anya hindmarsh things that you can do activities shops and so on um is that the sort of next embodiment of of the sustainable experience rather than thinking of it as a product and I think local well so yes I mean it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s a long story but localization is interesting to me we&amp;#39;ve opened this what we call a village which is sort of six doors and a cafe and we used to have sort of 65 stores around the world and and I very much wanted to actually bring it back to Roots it&amp;#39;s a longer story tied into me buying my business back and so on so there&amp;#39;s several different threads to it but I think that localization thing is important and I also do agree that experience over things is is very um it&amp;#39;s kind of what I want actually I I&amp;#39;ve got too many things and obviously I know I make things and sell things but I I&amp;#39;m naturally being drawn towards selling experiences coupled with things sometimes and sometimes not and you know the very fact that we&amp;#39;ve got 150 people queuing from nine o&amp;#39;clock in the morning every day outside a shop in Pond Street to um currently buy ice cream very unusual ice cream I suppose is Testament to the fact that I think that is that&amp;#39;s actually what people want um I think we all have too much stuff I think we all feel guilty about it it&amp;#39;s quite suffocating it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s a huge amount of money and memories are very precious no one never take your memories from you so I think there is a movement towards that and I think that&amp;#39;s very exciting so I did do some Market Research into the ice cream flavors as well and I believe I understand one of them is ketchup flavor which um which played to us somewhat um well basically the grown-ups thought it was awful and the kids thought it was great fun but interestingly you&amp;#39;ll find that when you taste it the grown-ups think it&amp;#39;s rather delicious and the kids find it not quite sweet enough um so it&amp;#39;s been working with this amazing um Devon um small batch ice cream maker we&amp;#39;ve come up with these flavors which are very unusual so for example soy sauce uh which is you know actually a toasted sesame quite Umami delicious quite sophisticated flavor there&amp;#39;s Branston pickle which is you know as you imagine it&amp;#39;s got lots of sort of fruits and um there&amp;#39;s uh digestive biscuit lemon curd there&amp;#39;s um right beans all sorts of amazing flavors but it&amp;#39;s a fun experience because it&amp;#39;s just unlikely um and I think you know your point about experience over things is is really is another way to solve this problem it&amp;#39;s going to be lots and lots of things coming together but I also I&amp;#39;m with you that I think is going to be some massive R and D into some incredible technology discovery that is really going to help us here because I&amp;#39;m kind of worried that we&amp;#39;re running out of time frankly so everything we need to do we should but I think we need some we need the economy the economy to be sound so we can afford the Big R D and just on your Pond Street on the village do you also um focus on the material the building materials because you know you&amp;#39;re you&amp;#39;re stripping out and you&amp;#39;re renovating stores you&amp;#39;ve been doing that for your your whole career since your first store that you opened in Pond Street um do you now look at the circularity of absolutely everything in the store the glass the the the when they lay the floor slab the Furnishings everything or is that kind of a next Frontier I think this is by the way so interesting because when we had 65 stores you know we had a design Bible and you go into a store and you strip it all out and all that lovely the previous sort of incumbent it all went and you put in your you know and you were sourcing stuff and it&amp;#39;s just so disgusting um and actually that&amp;#39;s why I wanted Less stores I want to bring it right down and actually what we&amp;#39;re working with is what&amp;#39;s there so you know those are beautiful old very old shops and yes there&amp;#39;s an element of new but we try and Source it locally but actually you need to put in shop fits that work that you can change and alter and what we were doing prior to to the Village also is we were doing these very big shows during Fashion Week where you know we were put on these massive sets proper huge like sort of theater level sets for what is essentially nine minutes of show yes admittedly that the kind of content would distribute around the world but that felt so wasteful even if we recycle materials afterwards it just felt wasteful in every respect so what&amp;#39;s lovely about the village for us is it replaces not only the infrastructure of stores around the world because actually we now get um people really engaging locally and then taking a sort of digital experience out but we also it replaces those in my view quite wasteful shows there&amp;#39;s so many fashion shows that tour the world and it just feels very um inappropriate really so it&amp;#39;s rather nice that we get all this creativity um locally and then we can we can distribute that digitally so Anna I wanted to be mean and sort of you know try to come out of this conversation and say well you know it&amp;#39;s the fashion industry you know it&amp;#39;s only got this much influence and people you know it&amp;#39;s only for rich people and it doesn&amp;#39;t do it and of course you&amp;#39;ve you&amp;#39;ve completely disarmed by every angle of attack and prove from that in fact what you&amp;#39;re doing is far far more influential than anything that I could possibly do so uh I&amp;#39;m I&amp;#39;m humbled well I&amp;#39;m humbled by your knowledge and the truth is we all learn from each other and I think it&amp;#39;s really important that I mean my industry is a silly industry in many respects but actually employs a lot of people it communicates widely it has massive influence so it&amp;#39;s just trying to use the bits of it that we can together with people like you and all your amazing experience and knowledge and all the people I work with the scientists and the in all the r d to kind of get it together ultimately we&amp;#39;ve got to club together on this this is not about individuals it&amp;#39;s about Collective actions and um I I still remain positive just because it&amp;#39;s a scary situation right now but I still remain positive that we can make Miracles if we all pull together well hopefully this podcast and this YouTube uh video will get your message to a slightly different audience um a lot of policy makers a lot of investors listen to this a lot of you know the Civic Society leaders uh in sustainability and climate change probably already uh interacted with you and your brand and your thinking but hopefully there&amp;#39;ll be some new audiences that have helped you to get to today and I just want to thank you for joining us it&amp;#39;s been absolutely tremendous thank you I lost you a bit at the end but yes I just think the more we share all these problems and these thoughts rightly or wrongly openly um hopefully better will do thank you very much for your time today great pleasure chatting with you so that was andyahind March fashion designer entrepreneur and leading voice on sustainability if you&amp;#39;ve enjoyed today&amp;#39;s conversation please remember to like share and subscribe to cleaning up or leave us a review on your chosen podcast platform and if you want more from cleaning up sign up for our free newsletter at cleaning up dot live where you&amp;#39;ll find our Archive of over 150 hours of conversation with extraordinary climate leaders and why not help someone else learn more about the Net Zero transition by introducing them to cleaning up cleaning up is brought to you by our lead supporter Capricorn Investment Group the Libre foundation and the gillardini foundation

Transcript for:Lecture with Anya Hindmarch on Sustainability and Fashion

Transcript for:
Lecture with Anya Hindmarch on Sustainability and Fashion