Circular Podcast with Hugo Tagholm

Katie Treggiden 

I’m Katie Treggiden and this is Circular, a podcast exploring the intersection of craft, design, and sustainability. Join me as I talk to the thinkers, doers and makers of the circular economy. These are the people who are challenging the linear take make waste model of production and consumption, and working towards something better. In this series, we’re talking about waste.

Hugo Tagholm 

We not only live increasingly in an urban environment, but we live increasingly in a digital environment, where people replace experiences with time in front of their screens. And that, in itself, is a problem because you can be perfectly placed beside a beautiful natural habitat and you know, the trends, you know, just show how much people are on screens.

 

 

Katie Treggiden 

Hugo Tagholm is first and foremost a surfer – not a very good one. His words, not mine. But he is like many of us Cornish folk drawn to spending time in the ocean. He first met the founders of Surfers Against Sewage, the National Marine Conservation charity he now heads up, in 1991, when he entered the environmentally oriented ‘Surf to Save’ competition on Polzeath Beach. He quickly became a fully paid up member, getting involved with water quality and climate change demos. He stepped into the role of CEO in 2008. Surfers Against Sewage is a charity who’s campaigning and direct action against ocean plastic has mobilised so many, that it could almost rebrand as People Against Plastic; mobilising over 100,000 community beach and river clean volunteers every year. Hugo is an environmentalist, an award winning campaigner, a TEDx speaker, and as I said, a surfer. Tell me about your childhood and your early affinity to water and eventually surfing?

Hugo Tagholm

Well, yeah, it’s a really interesting question my affinity to water and surfing. I think in the context of what I do today at Surfers Against Sewage and my sort of historic love of the water and for sport. You know, I would always put myself as an environmentalist first. As a kid, I was fascinated with nature all around me, and particularly the ocean and stuff that I found in the ocean, and particularly stuff that I found in the pond at the end of my garden. And so, water was always the environment that I felt sort of most fascinated about. And I had a room full of stuff that I sort of collected from the wilds around me whether it was sort of holidays in whichever part of the sort of country I would be in, or whether it’s from sort of my back garden or local park. I had a sort of a big collection of stuff that I thought was fascinating. I’m not sure everyone would have thought it was fascinating.

Katie Treggiden 

What sort of things did you collect?

Hugo Tagholm

Everything. I collected, you know, broken birds, eggs, shells, rocks, bones, all sorts of things that I would label. I would research. I would find out about them, and I would inform myself and educate myself about the natural world. I had this great love for nature, great love for this sort of big natural history, sort of personalities of our world, you know, the sort of Charles Darwins of the world. And then, as I sort of went through my teens, particularly, I was really into sport – running, swimming, and surfing. Surfing just happens to be this intersect for me, between, you know, what I love as an environmentalist and my passion for doing sort of sport and for activities, particularly in the ocean. So, it’s a great privilege to work at Surfers Against Sewage elite campaigns here, because it’s, you know, almost, almost tailor-made for me.

Katie Treggiden

And how does surfing and spending time in the ocean change our relationship with the environment?

Hugo Tagholm

Well look, anything we do, and it’s not the exclusive domain of surfing per se, but anything you do in the environment exposes you to the stuff around you the environment: the habitats, the ecosystem, the animals that surround you. So surfing, of course, is a great example of that. And, you know, we have the privilege to see, you know, dolphins, seals, seabirds, basking sharks, you know, here in the UK, and around the world, you have interactions with the weird and wonderful myriad of ocean creatures. There are some scarier than others, of course, it sort of puts you at the centre of that ecosystem in a funny sort of way, or as part of its centre would be sort of, I suppose, an arrogant way of looking at it, but it puts you as part of it. And so, you sort of become a marine species yourself, a marine indicator species that sees all of the things that happen in the environment. Of course, these are good things that the natural state, the abundance, the diversity, the brilliance and the sort of colorfulness of the ocean, but also the challenges it faces and that you know, in context of what I do today, of course, encompasses water pollution, plastic pollution, the type of destruction you might see on a beachfront. So, all of those sorts of things that become distinctly visible. You know, when you go surfing, when you go to the beach, of course, rock climbers would probably say the same, you know, maybe even golfers would say the same, I don’t know. But, certainly I feel privileged to be able to go surfing and have that in my life.

Katie Treggiden 

Populations are becoming more and more urban, and the higher and higher percentage of us are living in cities, do you think that disconnect from the natural world is a problem in terms of environmentalism?

Hugo Tagholm 

Well, I think that’s a wider problem in society. Of course, it might be in part driven by urban living, but we not only live increasingly in an urban environment, but we live increasingly in a digital environment, where people replace experiences with time in front of their screens. And that, in itself is a problem because you can be perfectly placed beside a beautiful natural habitat. And, you know, the trends, you know, just show how much people are on screens. And of course, when I was a kid, and I’m showing my age, you know, there were no mobile phones, there was no Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, you know, there was no Zoom, Skype or Google Meetups. And so, you know that the times have changed massively. And so, instead of, you know, investing time in exploring, you know, our natural world, maybe young people, and people at large are spending more time exploring the digital world. And that, of course, can in a way show you weird and wonderful things from around the world in terms of the natural world. But, you know, it stops you from having that tactile, live approach of getting your hands dirty, rolling up your sleeves, really understanding how the environment fits together around you. Not in a scientific sense, but in a practical sense. And I think that practical sense is something that, you know, society and people are losing, because, you know, they disconnect from nature, they take a step back from it, and in doing so, they also in a strange sort of way, become more fearful of it, and see themselves as separate from it. And of course, you know, the big thing we’re seeing now, particularly with the current global pandemic, is that we’re not separate from nature, we are absolutely part of nature. Our survival, and our ability to thrive on Planet Ocean, depends on the fabric of nature remaining intact in its natural state and not in an engineered state.

Katie Treggiden

I noticed you use the term Planet Ocean, whereas most people would probably say Planet Earth. Would you mind just expanding on that a little bit?

Hugo Tagholm

Well, the majority of the planet is ocean, so it seems perverse that we call it Planet Earth. And of course, much of that ocean is yet to be truly discovered. I think we’ve only mapped a few percent of our seabed and deep oceans and we probably know more about the moon surface than we do about our ocean ecosystem. Of course, it’s also under, you know, huge strain, this last bastion of our extraction, particularly of animal life, you know, industrial fishing is the last harvesting of wild animal protein at huge scale for the whole world. And that’s sort of pretty terrifying, as the ocean is under threat. So we live on this incredible blue planet, there’s still so much to celebrate and protect. And we need to, of course, as we enter into this new decade, which, you know, happens to be the UN decade of ocean science for sustainable development. It happens to be the UN decade of ecosystem restoration as well. You know, we see the need now for us to revitalise these ecosystems and not just protect them. This isn’t really a conservation effort anymore, because conservation is really about preserving a status quo. We need to see a restoration effort now, where we’re truly allowing the planet to flourish again. And that might need just less intervention from people where we allow habitats and ecosystems to recover and reestablish their natural equilibrium that we benefit from so much.

Katie Treggiden 

You’ve described yourself as an amphibious activist, and that’s another term I’d love to explore a bit more.

Hugo Tagholm 

Yeah, well, you know, I think from the days of being sort of waist deep in my garden pond, or rock pooling as a kid, or swimming in the ocean, or now surfing and going surfing with my son, Darwin, you know, I see my habitat as both land and sea. I feel sort of amphibious. I would never claim to be the best surfer or the most astute water person in the world, but I truly love the ability to be able to cross the threshold from land to sea and that thrilling moment of crossing that threshold where you immerse yourself in the sort of briny soup from where we all sort of ultimately came from originally. And that’s, that’s sort of amazing. So, you know, I find it very therapeutic. And I find it, you know, where I derive my inspiration for our campaigns from because as an organisation Surfers Against Sewage is, is really driven by the visceral, authentic experiences people have and, you know, that is sometimes my own but more often than hundreds and thousands of people who sort of support us, who feel a really direct affinity and a real relationship with their favourite beach or a bit of ocean or a bit of coastal park, and oftentimes find themselves, you know, diving in and catching some waves or swimming or sailing or hanging out with their kids and families and friends.

Katie Treggiden

Yeah, certainly, certainly, the call of the ocean is strong, I think, isn’t it? This series of the podcast is specifically about waste and you’ve touched on plastic waste very briefly, but I’m interested to know,  you’ve been volunteering for Surfers Against Sewage for a long time before you were its CEO and you’ve talked about this sort of long standing relationship you’ve had with water and the ocean. I’d love to know what your ‘aha’ moment was with ocean plastic. When did that sort of come onto your radar as an issue? And what was it that made you realise it should be such an important focus for Surfers Against Sewage?

Hugo Tagholm

Look, I’m not totally sure it sort of happens entirely that way. We’ve been working on ocean plastic for a long time. For, you know, well over a decade, in a probably close to 15 years, you know, probably half our sort of lifespan as an organization. We’ve run ocean, plastic pollution campaigns, of course, beach, cleans, mobilising people from around the world and around the country to tackle the problem directly, but more importantly, to connect both voices to call for change at legislative level and with businesses. You know, the ‘aha’ moments, retrospectively, I think we can always find them. They’re always something that we go OK, so this is how it happened and I think we often see that in people’s autobiographies. We see that and in people’s storytelling in this day and age, because it fits nicely. It shows a strategic intent. It shows all of those things. I’m not sure it always happens that cleanly. You know, we weren’t working on this really hard for a long time up, you know, right, sort of through on things like plastic bag charges, on sort of bans on discussions at Parliament, you know, launching our marine plastic pollution report in 2013, bringing people together to campaign for deposit returns, you know, all of these things. But there were a couple of big moments that were sort of forks in the road. One was that storm Hercules in 2014, at the beginning of 2014. There was so much plastic that was washed up on beaches around the Southwest. It was like a light bulb moment for lots of new organisations who suddenly started to get together, beach cleaners wanted to come out even more with us, we saw the real sort of toll that the single use culture is placing on our natural ocean environment, and illuminated that to so many more people, which was great. So it was a quite a catalytic moment and accelerator point. And then the big moment that everyone sort of thinks about is the Blue Planet in 2017. In the summer/autumn time of 2017. We, you know, we at that time had already, you know, we were very established on beach cleans, very established on the lobbying for new legislation to stop plastics, very established with our new Plastic Free Communities programme. And then the Blue Planet came along, which was cool. And it was cool, because we were ready and waiting to do much more with people. We were at the catcher’s mitt as it were, for people to take action in some ways. And what’s really incredible about that moment, is that people really remember and talk about the Blue Planet as, as a sort of a plastic pollution film that sort of changed the world. But, it wasn’t really about plastic pollution only. I think only 14 minutes was dedicated to plastic pollution out of seven hours of broadcasting. So, it’s just amazing how powerful that was being projected into households around the country and around the world. And we certainly saw a big sort of uplift and interest in what we’re doing. We, we work with about 100,000 volunteers a year, we’ve got 700 plastic free communities around the country. We’ve been instrumental in legislation on you know, the ban on straws and stirrers and cotton buds that’s going to come in. We were successful in winning the campaign on deposit return systems and on you know, the plastic bag charge before all of that. So, you know, loads of things that people have been engaged with. And, you know, it’s sort of interesting, because plastic is such a visible, visible pollutant, and it’s so present in all of our lives. You know, I don’t think anyone could claim that they don’t have any interaction with plastic on any given day, or very few people could. And so it’s been a real, real enabler for people to take action. And I think people now have to think about the journey that’s truly taking them on, that we carry on campaigning hard to actually offer reduction in the amount of plastic that’s being produced, that we ask for true systems and materials change. Just to digress slightly, you know, we are in a period of beautiful fine weather and we see beaches being really decimated by plastic pollution at the moment, lots of littering happening. And that’s really, really bad and people shouldn’t litter. But you know, that’s a symptom of there being way too much plastic in society and for it being used in the wrong places, and for there being no truly circular economy systems that can capture and reprocess that plastic. So people shouldn’t litter, but we’re never going to solve the problem by picking up plastic and putting it in a bin and burning it or burying it. We truly need to reform all of the systems and the companies that produce it need to be responsible for driving that. Not over a number of years, but over as quick a timeframe as possible, because there’s already a plastic pollution crisis, and they are pumping more and more into the environment every day.

Katie Treggiden

And actually, that brings me nicely to a quote I’d like to share from your foreword to the brilliant Lucy Siegle’s book, Turning the Tide on Plastic. And in that foreword, you said, ‘Plastic is an extraordinary material – flexible, colourful, light, abundant and almost indestructible. It has had an impact on every human industry, and revolutionised the very way we live. Plastic is also an extraordinary pollutant – flexible, colourful, light, abundant and almost indestructible. The very properties that make it so useful, also make it problematic when it escapes into the environment.’ And that really struck me as a powerful way to frame this argument, actually, plastic’s very success is what makes it so problematic. But I mean, originally, plastic was designed to be something that was high value and durable and would last, so how have we got to this place where it’s become so undervalued, overused and disposable?

Hugo Tagholm 

Well, I don’t know if it was always meant to be something that was meant to be kept in permanence. So there was a great shift, you know, with the introduction of plastics. Hey look, it’s going to liberate people from having to do the washing up and do stuff because they can get rid of stuff, and they can have new sort of things. And so that’s part of the sort of the single use culture that emerged early on too. You know, I think the key reason behind it is sort of capitalism. You know, it’s big, multinational businesses, it’s cheap oil, making cheap packaging that can make them more profits. It’s also really long supply chains that require lots of, you know, a lightweight packaging, to wrap products and distribute them around the world. So we have this global system, a global sort of economic system, we’ve got global supply chains, and plastic has been the vector to make all of that happen. It’s the most profitable way that lots of these companies do business, but they’re really externalising the cost of the impact of that plastic, you know, both in the immediate term and in the long term. And that’s the story, we now need to sort of tell that actually, this, you know, this, this business as usual is, is really trading in our future for the convenience of cappuccinos and single use products around the country on a daily basis. So, you know, there’s a big question about the systems revolution we need, the materials revolution we need, but there’s no doubt that we mustn’t chuck out the baby with the bathwater, you know, plastic used in the right way for the right things can be really good. And we all depend on it in many ways. So, you know, just saying we should ban it all is also not an option. And we need to find a way that is truly used for the right products, that are durable and can last a long time and that we move to a culture of reuse and refilling and a much more domestic circular recycling economy that doesn’t export our plastic pollution problem to developing nations and nations that are less well suited to cope or less, you know, well financially suited to cope with this waste because, again, we’re just sweeping it under the carpet and effectively dumping our rubbish in other countries for them to deal with. And worse still, we often have the audacity as a country to then point the finger of blame at these countries and say, look how filthy the plastic pollution problem is over there and they should do more about it. So, you know, we need to change all of that.

Katie Treggiden

After the break. Hugo and I talked about beach cleans, reusable coffee cups, plastic free communities, as well as legislative and systemic change and how big business need to repurpose their tools and resources to do good and look after Planet Ocean.

I might have mentioned I’ve got a new book coming out. Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure, published by Ludion, is available to pre order on Amazon now and in local bookshops from 8^th October.

When those systems are so global and intertwined and big and complicated, I think they can feel overwhelming. How do we start to bring about that systemic change that’s needed?

Hugo Tagholm 

Well, look, I think there’s another elephant in the room with this. I mean, the systemic change. I mean, people often talk about a top down or a bottom up approach. So you know, people are prescribed to either, or, quite often, you know, they think all change will happen because of people getting together, or all change will happen because big policy leaders or business leaders will make the changes necessary. Actually, it’s neither one nor the other. It’s a combination of them both. People need to carry on doing beach cleans, creating the evidence they need to carry on building plastic free communities, they need to carry on refilling their coffee cups and water bottles, they need to carry on rejecting single use culture to build a critical mass and buy into that, and to push on the right legislative and policy and business moments, to get our leaders and elected officials to think about the changes that are needed, and then implement those changes at pace. You know, one of the things that is a challenge, probably most of all, to the sort of environmental factors that we can’t necessarily just start from scratch again, some of these big businesses have the systems know-how, and the supply chain know-how to actually create change. They’ve got the expertise, they’ve got the audiences, they’ve got the structure, and they need to repurpose some of this stuff to do good for the planet, so they’re truly protecting Planet Ocean from plastic pollution, and truly protecting, you know, our society from the other sort of impacts they might be part of. And so, there has to be sort of a collaborative intent around that. But at the same time, we’re very determined that we shouldn’t let big business carry on as usual. You know, we are seeing the wholesale sort of degradation of our planet at the moment. And that’s just to create short-term profits really. And we need to make sure that the full lifecycle of all of these, you know, multinational companies’ products is considered and they’re responsible for the recovery and reprocessing of materials that they’re using, and creating that circularity that we depend on, because ultimately, the linear economy will push us over the edge of being able to survive on Planet Ocean.

Katie Treggiden

Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more, I think it’s definitely time for some of the accountability to be pushed upstream, and for some big, top down changes. But as you said, the bottom up changes are also important. You mentioned there, plastic free communities, and also the beach cleans. Would you mind telling us a little bit more about those two initiatives and the success that they’ve had?

Hugo Tagholm 

When I took the helm here in 2008, we worked with very few beach cleaners really. Probably, maybe up to 1000 people a year. Brilliant volunteers, but we hadn’t scaled anything there. And then we began an ambitious programme and today, we, you know, we’re really proud to have you know, 100,000, amazing volunteers, you know, collaborating with us every year to not just pick up plastic and other, you know, packaging waste at our beaches, but also to create a data set around that, and a really focused data set that can help us, you know, push on the right sort of political channels to create change. And we’ve done that really successfully over the last few years, to deliver the successes that there will, you know, come on stream soon around plastic bottles and the sort of certain items that will be banned. The Plastic Free Communities was a concept that I sort of came up with when, you know, in 2016, you know, I realised that within our space, despite the fact that we have beach cleaning, and that we were running campaigns that were calling for, you know, financial incentives to stop plastic pollution and the such like, there was no comprehensive campaign that brought people together on the sort of fight against plastic pollution and the attempts to reduce our plastic footprint on this planet. And so I was inspired by the Fairtrade Town models, which have a certain framework, a step-by-step framework that you can get Fairtrade House status with. And we looked at that, and we created the same sort of thing for the plastic movement. And I thought back in 2016, or 2017 when we actually got it off the ground, I thought, you know, it will be ambitious to have 125 communities by 2020 involved, and we’ve got 700 and something already, which is incredible. Amazingly sort of diverse geographic locations from Hackney to the Highlands, and you know, incredible volunteers doing things not just within our five step programme, which brings together local businesses, local government, schools and NGOs as sort of a steering committee, and then lots of live events to tackle plastic, but they’re doing not only our framework, but adding lots more to it. So it’s a very open programme about empowering people to do more, bringing people together and asking them the question, ‘how much further can they go?’ because it’s not a programme that starts and ends, it’s a programme that starts and continues. And that’s really the nature of it.

Katie Treggiden 

I mean, just the sheer numbers of people getting involved there really speaks volumes about how much people are getting behind this as an issue.

Hugo Tagholm 

Yeah, look, I think plastic pollution has, you know, captured hearts and minds around the world and has also thrown a spotlight onto us all in terms of our own behaviours and attitudes in our consumption. Because, of course, really, the plastic packaging with single use plastics that we’re really targeting, is really a proxy measure for general consumption too. So people will think about their plastic footprint, but they will also align that with how much they’re consuming, and other areas that you know, the food they’re consuming, the clothes they’re consuming, the products they’re consuming, and actually start to feel more sensitive about their impact on this sort of planet. So, it is, it is sort of incredible that it can do that. It’s something that’s so sort of part of our lives at the moment, it’s been so immediate for people that I think it’s been the ultimate sort of access point for environmentalism for many. And of course, we’ve seen a whole raft of new environmental NGOs springing up on the back of plastic pollution. You know, some doing really good work on the sort of community front with sort of plastic pick up, some doing really good work on the sort of refill, a sort of agenda and those sorts of things. So it’s great to see that and then, you know, many of them, those campaigns and new organisations, we can trace back into roots that, you know, Surfers Against Sewage have been proudly banging the drum on for, you know, 15 or so years. So it’s great to see so many people, you know, coming to the table with sort of a, you know, fresh take on ideas and new capacity to deliver those.

Katie Treggiden

That’s the nice thing about working for a cause. There’s kind of no such thing as competitors are there? It’s all collaborators in the same end goal.

Hugo Tagholm  

Here, we love collaborating, yeah.

Katie Treggiden  

What do you think the future holds for plastic? Plastic waste, kind of all of these issues we’ve been talking about? The oceans, our environmental…..

Hugo Tagholm

Look, I think we have a really important decade now, you know, the decade of ocean science for sustainable development. And you know, the habitat, sort of the ecosystem, regeneration, and recovery is, is a vital, you know, mission this decade. We can’t truly do that, if we have this input, this massive input of plastic pollution, which is not only, you know, a physical threat to the wildlife out there, but because it’s a threat to our food chains and it’s a chemical threat. There’s a chemical load that goes into the ocean with that, too. If you think to an example of sort of chemical loads, you know, we ban PCBs back in 1980. Yet the toxic load of those in the ocean is still rendering Orca populations infertile and playing havoc with our, you know, with our whale population. So for, for me, you know that the time for action is now. The future can be much bluer. We’ve seen that nature can rebound and particularly ocean ecosystems can rebound quite quickly if we give them the space to breathe. That’s why we’re really excited to be working on the highly protected marine area sort of agenda, because we need to, we need to truly let the ocean flourish again. And we’ve also seen that big business can pivot much faster than they previously proclaimed. So we’ve seen in three months, them change everything in certain cases in how they do business. And, and so this old protestation that we’ve heard for many years, for many decades of, ‘oh, it takes a long time…too complicated…not enough resources,’ all of that, it’s actually, it’s a fallacy. Where there’s a political and business will, in the face of a crisis, they can do things very, very quickly. And so, we need to have more urgency and speed to these changes. We haven’t got time to sort of call for more science as to whether there is a plastic pollution crisis there. You know, there evidently is, we know there’s a climate crisis. We know there’s a biodiversity crisis. And whilst new evidence can help steer the ship of action, to certain sort of ports along the way, the direction of travel needs to be accelerated now, because we know the business as usual is, is killing our planet. I think there’s no easy way to put it. If we carry on, on the trajectory that we’re on, all of the science and evidence we’ve collected historically says that we’re, you know, in huge trouble. And so, now we’ve got this evidence that shows that we can pivot things really quickly, and we can move quickly. So broadly, we need to point the ship in another direction. There’s ports and desolate parts of the route that we don’t quite know of, but we do know the direction it needs to go in. And that’s changing some of the big business practices that are, you know, really, really damaging. So, you know, extractive industries like oil and fossil fuels, you know, single use plastics in the current system, really are causing a massive problem. You know, we’re seeing the habitat destruction from things, you know, industrial fishing being hugely problematic. So, we need to triage this and go like, what industries are hurting us the most?

Katie Treggiden

Yeah. Brilliant, and I think that’s a fantastic note to end on – the time to act is now. Thank you so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure talking to you and some really fascinating and urgent insights there I think.

Hugo Tagholm  

Cool, right. Well, it’s been great to talk to you too. I’m hopeful moving forward that we can restore this amazing planet.

Katie Treggiden 

I hope so too. If you enjoyed this episode of Circular with Katie Treggiden, can I ask you to leave a review and perhaps even hit the subscribe button? Those two actions really help other people to find the podcast, so I would be very grateful. Thank you.

Thank you to Hugo Tagholm, Gordon Barker for the edit, October Communications for marketing support, Sound Compound for the music, and to you for joining me. You’ve been listening to Circular with Katie Treggiden.

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P.S. I am recording Season Two of the podcast now and the theme this time is repair. I really believe that people who make and mend with their hands hold the keys to helping us move from a linear ‘take-make-waste’ model to a more sustainable ‘circular’ economy. If you do too, I am looking for likeminded brands to help bring the meaningful conversations I know I’m going to have on this season of the podcast to a larger audience. Email me and I’ll send you more info on how you could get involved as a brand partner.