Making Design Circular Podcast – Season 4 – Walk Don’t Run: The 5-stage path to sustainability

Welcome to season four of Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden, in which we’re exploring what it takes to cultivate a creative practice in which you, your business and the planet ALL get to thrive. We’ll be diving deep into the nuances, complexities and mindset shifts that we need to embrace to bring about a just transition to a more circular economy.

In this episode, Katie digs into one part of her Making Design Circular framework, the methodology that underpins everything she does. She talks about walk, and walk is short for walk, don’t run. It is this idea that you don’t have to do everything all at once you can take things step by step. And to support you doing that she has developed a path to sustainability, taking of all the things you could possibly do and put them into an order. By the end of this episode, you will be able to work out whether you are an acorn, seedling, sapling, tree or a forest, and take away at least one action you can do this week to help you move towards the next stage.

Here are some highlights:

One step at a time

“There’s 100 different ways to become more sustainable. But what I’ve done is interviewed hundreds of designers and makers and craftspeople at different stages of their journey and tried to understand what they did when, so that I can put all of the stuff into some sort of order for you. And I think that just takes some of the overwhelm out of it. Because it enables you to take this one step at a time, it enables you to walk not to run.”

Replicate what we celebrate

“…recognise and celebrate how far you’ve come. In fact, for anybody make a list of 10 things you’re already doing really well. And I think it’s so important. Positive psychology shows that our brains seek to replicate what we celebrate. So yes, it’s important for your well being and your just general sense of joy, but also, celebrating your success and giving yourself credit where it’s due actually means you’re more likely to achieve more of those things”

Books mentioned:

Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world: Katie’s sixth book celebrates 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.

Cultivating Hope, 3 part mini course: Are you ready to cultivate hope in the face of the climate crisis? Sign up to Katie’s three-part free mini course that will help you move through feelings of helplessness, reconnect with nature and take aligned action.

Making Design Circular membership: An international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople – join us!

Spread the Word:

Please share Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden with wild abandon — with your friends, family, and fellow designer-makers or wherever interesting conversations about creativity happen in your world!

If you love what you’re listening to, show us some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. All that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

Sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ – just click here.

And find me on the Interwebs:  @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube) & @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram) – and if you’re a designer, maker, artist or craftsperson, join me on IG @making_design_circular_

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is the founder and director of Making Design Circular – an international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople. She is also an author, journalist and podcaster championing a hopeful approach to environmentalism. With more than 20 years’ experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, Crafts Magazine and Dezeen. She is currently exploring the question ‘Can craft save the world?’ through her sixth book, Broken: Mending & Repair in a Throwaway World (Ludion, 2023), this very podcast.

Below is a transcript of our conversation. Find the full episode available to listen on Spotify here.

INTRO

Welcome to season four of Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden, in which we’re exploring what it takes to cultivate a creative practice in which you, your business and the planet ALL get to thrive. We’ll be diving deep into the nuances, complexities and mindset shifts that we need to embrace to bring about a just transition to a more circular economy.

PODCAST SNIPPET

Recognise and celebrate how far you’ve come. In fact, for anybody make a list of 10 things you’re already doing really well. And I think it’s so important. Positive psychology shows that our brains seek to replicate what we celebrate. So yes, it’s important for your well being and your just general sense of joy, but also, celebrating your success and giving yourself credit where it’s due actually means you’re more likely to achieve more of those things.

EPISODE INTRO

Hello, and welcome to this episode of making design circular with Katie Treggiden. In seasons three and four, we’ve been really digging into the making design circular framework. So this is the methodology that underpins everything I do in the membership in the online courses. And today I wanted to talk about walk. So the framework is divided into three sections, release, plant and grow. And within grow, we have learn, walk and nurture, and walk is short for walk, don’t run. And it is this idea that you don’t have to do everything all at once you can take things step by step. And to support you doing that I have developed a path to sustainability. So I’ve taken kind of all the things you could possibly do and put them in an order. So for this episode, I thought I would talk you through that path to sustainability, not in as much depth as we go into in the membership, but in enough depth that I hope by the end of this episode, you will be able to work out whether you are an acorn, a seedling or sapling, a tree or a forest, and take away at least one action you can do this week to help you move towards the next stage. So that’s what I thought I’d do in this episode. Please enjoy. And as always, hit me up with an Instagram DM if you’ve got any questions if you just want to let me know where you are on that path, or you want to celebrate the action that you’ve taken as a result, enjoy.

PODCAST INTERVIEW

I always like to start with this quote. So there is the sort of quoted version is a journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step. But I did a bit of digging, really because I wanted to find out who said it. And it’s most commonly attributed to Laozi. But apparently the correct English translation of the original quote is a journey of 1000 Lee, which is a Chinese mile, starts beneath one’s feet. And I love this version. Because I think it’s not about necessarily your first step of the journey. It’s about starting where you are starting with what you have starting with what’s in front of you or underneath you. And so I always start an explanation of the five stage path to sustainability with this quote, with this idea that wherever you’re starting from is good and valid and perfect.

So the five stage path to sustainability has five stages, as the name suggests, and those are acorn, seedlings, sapling, tree and forest. So as we go through, and as I talk through each of those stages, have a think of note down, which one of those you think you are. And obviously, I should say that this is not the only route up the mountain, right, there’s 100 different ways to become more sustainable. But what I’ve done is interviewed hundreds of designers and makers and craftspeople at different stages of their journey and tried to understand what they did when, so that I can put all of the stuff into some sort of order for you. And I think that just takes some of the overwhelm out of it. Because it enables you to take this one step at a time, it enables you to walk not to run. So I’m going to talk through each of the stages have a think about which stage you might be and then I will give you some steps you can take to get to the next stage.

So the first stage is acorn. And acorns are full of good intentions, but haven’t actually done a lot yet. And that might be because they’re a new business, or it might be because they’re a legacy business. And they set up before this stuff was kind of really front of mind. And so they’re now trying to sort of retrofit sustainability actions into an existing business. They won’t have any formal environmental policies or accreditations in place yet. So there’s very much that sense of good intentions. And I should also say when you’re working out which stage you’re at, if you haven’t been following my path, obviously, you won’t necessarily fit neatly into one stage or another. So you might fall between two or have bits of one and bits of another. And that’s absolutely fine. The best thing to do is work out roughly where you are, and then go backwards to scoop up any missing bits before you move forward. But you’ll get a sense of that as I talk through. So acorns care deeply about this stuff. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here, right? But you’re not necessarily sure where to start. And they often feel guilty for not doing enough or they feel behind or they feel overwhelmed. And often they’re already firefighting, there’s not enough time or money or headspace. For a lot of you, your craft practice is not necessarily your full time job, right, and you might have caregiving responsibilities, you might have a day job. So you know, you’ve already got a lot on your plate. And what I always say is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being an acorn. Nobody picks up an acorn off the forest floor and criticises it for not being an oak tree, right? You are full of potential at this stage. And I think it’s a really, really exciting stage to be at. So if you are feeling that you’re an acorn, I love that. And let me know, please feel free again to send me a DM on Instagram or an email and let me know if you’ve worked out which stage you’re at, I’d love to hear that.

So then we have the seedlings, and seedlings are just getting started. So they might have done things like signing up for 1% for the planet, which is where you donate 1% of your turnover to environmental causes every year, a sort of planet tax, as it were. Seedlings might have done their carbon literacy training. So they might have got carbon literacy certified and started to get a sense of why carbon matters, and how to measure and reduce their carbon footprint. And as I mentioned, I have a course that does just that, that certified by the carbon literacy project, they might have started thinking about carbon neutral deliveries. So thinking about how their products get from them to their customers, if they’re not bought live at a craft fair. They might have declared a climate emergency. And the other thing I should say is all of these steps are optional, right? The point is for you to consider each of these things, not necessarily do them. So in the membership, we’ve had a big debate about what declaring a climate emergency means. And some folks have decided to do it, and some folks have decided not to do it. And that’s absolutely cool. All I ask is that you’ve thought about each of these things in order to move through these stages. And then seedlings are also consciously sourcing materials and or packaging. So thinking about that supply chain, kind of where those materials or packaging have come from what they’re made from who’s been involved in their production all that sort of thing. They might have written an internal manifesto, so a sense of understanding their own values when it comes to their environmental efforts. And they are probably tracking, if not necessarily actively reducing their waste and their carbon emissions. So they’ve started just to get a sense of the current picture. Seedlings are often feeling a mixture of daunted and excited. So they’ve got the knowledge, but they now need to implement it. So there’s that sense of, oh, yes, I could do this. And I could do this. And I could do this but oh gosh, when am I going to find the time, they have lots of ideas, but sometimes find it hard to implement those as a small business or a creative practice. So if you’re a seedling again, I would love to hear from you shoot me a DM on Instagram or send me an email or whatever it is, it would be great to hear that you’ve identified yourself at that point.

And then saplings are right in the middle of this five-stage path. So they are making amazing progress, but they’ve still got a long way to go. They might have signed up for living wage. So they might be paying anybody in their team, anybody in their supply chain and crucially themselves, I always have to remind seedlings that they are, saplings sorry, that they also need to be paying themselves a living wage. They might have looked into some material specific accreditations. So something like Gotz for textiles or FSC for wood, or fair mind. And these are ways in which you can make sure you’re not marking your own homework. So someone else is giving us certification to say yep, that material has been responsibly sourced. And again, this is a discussion. So one of my members at the moment looked into using FSC wood, but realised that would mean the wood he used would have to be more expensive and not as good quality and didn’t feel that was a decision he wanted to make. And he actually happens to know or doesn’t happen to know quite intentionally knows that all of the wood he uses is grown in Britain and comes from sustainable sources. So he felt that he would rather make that decision that enabled him to create high quality, higher quality products than have that certification. So again, what I ask is that each of these stages, all you’re doing is making a decision. You’re not necessarily following my path. It’s about making your own values aligned decision. Saplings might be tracking and reducing or offsetting. And we can have a whole conversation about the rights and wrongs of offsetting their carbon, they will have an ethical and transparent supply chain, as far as they’re able to very much depends on the size of the businesses you’re dealing with often, and they will have started to think about designing for repair and designing for disassembly. So this sense of what happens to my product after it’s out of my hands, can it be mended? Do I offer a repair service? Or can my customers mend it, and at the very end of its life, can it be taken to pits so it can be recycled or go back into the earth in a way that is beneficial to the earth. So it’s that sense of, this idea, the second pillar of circular economy is to keep materials and objects in use. So it’s thinking about the full lifecycle of your products. And saplings, as I said, are right in the middle of this five stage path, so they’re flipping between the pride in the steps they’ve taken so far, and the guilt around the ones they haven’t taken yet. There’s often some frustration at the systemic issues that small businesses have no control over. So I always joke that I decided to move from plastic sellotape to brown paper sellotape. And the minimum order was something like, I can’t remember like 80 rolls or something. So every drawer you open in my house at the moment has brown paper sellotape in it, my husband thinks it’s hilarious. But that’s just a tiny example of these kind of big systemic issues that make it really hard for smaller businesses to tap into some of this stuff. And again, there’s a lack of lack of time and budget for bigger certifications. So we talk a lot in the membership about B Corp, and a lot of bigger companies will have a full time person just working on their a B Corp application. So that’s hard when you’re a single human business, right. So these are some of the challenges that saplings are facing. And this is where exhaustion and burnout can set in. And it’s so important, this idea of nurturing yourself looking after yourself as the kind of main resource in your business.

So then we get onto trees and trees are close to achieving all their eco goals. And obviously, those goals will be changing and evolving. But as far as they can, they’re sort of almost there. And they’re now seeking external validation. So they want those stamps, those certifications, the sense of not marking their own homework, they will be b-corp pending. So they will have put in their B-Corp application. And they will have published EPDs, which are environmental product declarations on some of their products. So they might have chosen their best selling product or their their most environmentally friendly product. And EPDs are a lifecycle analysis of the environmental impact of your products. And again, they’re externally validated. Trees are carbon neutral. So they are taking the same amount of carbon out of the atmosphere out of the atmosphere as they are emitting, which means they have a sort of a net zero impact on the environment. When it comes to carbon. There’s zero waste. So they’re making sure that they’re as a first stance sort of reducing waste in their production process. And secondly, any waste they do produce is being used and put back into the process, either by them or by partners, collaboration can really help here. They offer repair schemes or take back schemes. So again, thinking about that end of life, and they have a formal structure in place for measuring progress. And that is part of B Corp, you have to produce these reports, sort of environmental impact reports. Once you get to tree stage, your business and creative practice feels completely aligned with your personal values but the B Corp process or the EPD, the environmental product declaration process might have highlighted some gaps. So often you get to this stage where you sort of think, oh, yeah, I’m doing everything, okay. And then you go through one of these processes, and it’s all never even thought about that. And I had this when I went through the impact assessment for B Corp. Because my business is online and very international it’s never really occurred to me that it’s based in Cornwall. I know that sounds ridiculous, I’m very aware that I live in Cornwall. But it had never occurred to me that you know, Cornwall is a is a place that suffers from real poverty and creating local jobs is something that I could be doing to have a positive impact on the people part of people and planet. So that was a gap that that highlighted for me. And that can sometimes feel like a bit of a step backwards, because you sort of think, Oh, I thought I was there. You know, I thought I was doing so well. And then here’s all this other stuff I hadn’t even thought of. So that can happen tree stage. Then it’s about how to communicate with credibility, I think as you get bigger as a company as a creative practice, there is more scrutiny on you and rightly so. And it’s also about those next levels of investment. So I’ve had conversations as part of my research for this with bigger craft companies who you know, really want to invest in their own electric vehicles to do all their deliveries, but just aren’t quite there yet investment wise. So those are the sorts of things that trees might be facing.

And then we have forests. And I should say, I think I’ve only come across one of these. So this is real Northstar thinking right? And going through this, you might decide that actually you only ever want to get as far as a sapling or a tree. And that’s absolutely fine. There is no onus on you to get all the way to forest. But I think it’s helpful to lay out the full journey so that we can see. And the reason I’ve called this level forest is because of the mycelium network that exists under the forest floor connecting all the trees. So forests are as environmentally responsible as they come and are now ready to help others, that mycelium network idea. They are B Corp certified, and they have EPDs published on every single product, there are only a couple of companies in our industry that have achieved either or, well, certainly both of those things. There’s lots of B Corps now, but very few who have EPDs published on every product, forests are carbon negative. So forests are actually taking carbon out of the atmosphere, they might be emitting some, but they are pulling more out. So the net effect is a negative carbon impact. And they’re investing in regenerative projects. So they’re really moving out of the phase of doing less harm and into the phase of actively doing good, how can they leave the planet better off than it would have been without them. And they’re also mentoring other businesses, they are always looking for ways to improve and stay up to date with the latest developments because of course, this stuff is always changing, there’s no standing still. And they’re finding ways to give back, so they might be taking on community leadership roles, trying to tackle some of those systemic issues, right. So some of the things that the seedlings and saplings are facing, the forests are up there at the front trying to sort out, they might have any D rolls in smaller businesses, they might have set up a foundation to sort of actively do some of that good, or they might be doing angel investment into smaller companies and startups. So having heard all of that, have a think about whether you think you’re an acorn, seedling or sapling, a tree or a forest. And as I said, it’s completely valid. If you feel you sit between those or you’ve got bits of a few you haven’t been moving along this process so far. So of course, it won’t be as neat, as I’ve just described it. And once you’ve decided which level you feel more comfortable with, just look back and see if there are any actions that you’re missing that you need to sort of scoop up to ground yourself in that level. And then have a think about which level you aspire to. So do you want to be a forest, or actually with the sort of size of business and creative practice that you aspire to would you be quite happy being a sapling or, you know, acorn, seedling, tree or forests, they’re all valid. And then we’re going to look at what’s one action that you can take today, that will help you get one step closer to the level you aspire to be at.

So within the five stage path to sustainability that exists within the making design circular membership, there are eight or 10 or 12 steps within each of those stages. I’m going to share three with you today, just to not overwhelm you and to give you an introduction, and I’m hoping at least one of those three will be something you feel you can dive straight into. So it will be nice and actionable and again, please feel free to send me a DM on Instagram or an email to let me know how all this stuff is landing.

AD BREAK

I want to use this opportunity of a little sort of mini ad break of sorts to tell you about three things that I think you might be interested in. The first is my latest book Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world, which came out in May 2023, with Ludion the publisher of my last four books, and I’m so excited about it. Jay blades was kind enough to write the foreword, and it explores the role of mending and repair in a world where we don’t really need to mend anymore. So I’m looking at the social and cultural roles that mending is playing. And those include mending as restoration of function, which you might sort of immediately think of when you think of repair, but also repair a storytelling repair as activism, repair as healing, and even the regeneration of natural systems as a form of repair. It profiles 28, amazing menders, fixers, hackers, remakers, curators and artists. And it is the book I’m the most proud of so far. And I know I always say that, but I really am, it came out of my research at Oxford and I think it makes an important and new contribution to the field of writing on repair. So if you want to get your hands on a copy, the link is in the show notes.

I would also love to tell you about a free resource I have created called cultivating hope in the face of the environmental crisis. And the reason I have made this freely available is because I think it’s so important. If we don’t believe that change is possible and if we don’t believe we have some agency in bringing about that change, we won’t act. So cultivating hope is a three part mini course that’s all delivered direct to your inbox. And it helps you to move through feelings of despair and hopelessness. It helps you to reconnect with nature and that sort of brilliant effect that we know natural spaces have on our wellbeing. And it helps you to start taking aligned action. So if the relentless news cycle has got you feeling, kind of feeling all the doom and gloom, then check that out. Again, the link is in the show notes.

And finally, I want to tell you about making design circular the membership. So if you are a designer, a maker, an artist or a crafts person, and you feel drawn to sustainability, regeneration, environmentalism, whatever you want to call it, this is for you. It is an online membership community of brilliant, gorgeous, imperfect souls who have come together to try to make progress in this area. And it’s all built around the idea that you can pour into yourself and take care of yourself and pour into your creative practice and your expression and exploration of creativity and pour into your business and turn all of this or keep all this as a profitable business and benefit the planet. And we want all of those things in alignment so that pouring into any one of them benefits the others and that’s what the membership is built around. The strapline is rewild your creative practice so that you your business and the planets can thrive. So if that sounds like something that you need in your life, again, the link is in the show notes. All right, well, I will hand you back over to this fabulous conversation. Thank you.

MAIN PODCAST

So acorns needs clarity about the path ahead, which I’m hoping I’ve just given you information and resources to support that journey, help making time for this work. So I talked about those co working sessions in the membership, that’s a really amazing way to carve out a little bit of time, it might be that you have a couple of friends that are also interested in this sort of thing and you can get together and do that informally. And a community of fellow travellers, you know, we talked about this idea of specific being a kind of bravery, it’s so helpful to have community to be able to see the people around you also making the same decisions. And three steps you can take if you want to move from being an acorn to a seedling. One is to carry out a waste audit. So this doesn’t have to be anything too complicated. I mean, if you’re into spreadsheets and you want to weigh everything go for your life, but it might be just finding some way to catalogue everything that goes in your bin and that includes your recycling bins, from your studio or workspace over a week, over a month, whatever period of time feels manageable. And I’ve had members who’ve laid them all out on the floor and taken a photo, of sort of flatlay photo or categorise them by colour or by texture or by material. The important thing is to find a way that resonates with you, of capturing your waste and then just observing it, no judgement, no action at this stage. It’s just about knowledge and awareness. Another thing you might want to do to move from acorns to seedling is to sign up for 1% for the planet. So this is an initiative that was started by the founder of Patagonia. And the idea is that you donate 1% of your turnover, not profit to an environmental charity every year. And that 1% can be made up of half. So half a percent or 50% of your 1% of cash. A quarter can be in raising awareness. So you might talk about that charity, and you might talk about 1% of the planet, in your newsletter on your social media feeds, you know, perhaps in the little bits and bobs you send out with a product. And another quarter can be in volunteering. So if that charity is active local to you, you can go and spend time with them. Whether that’s planting trees, or doing litter picks, or whatever it is, so that 1% can be made up of cash, volunteering and raising awareness. And then the third thing that you could do to help you move from acorn to seedling is to look into carbon neutral deliveries. So however your products are being sent out to your customers, in situations where you’re not doing that transaction in person. So if somebody’s buying something off your website, for example, how does it get sent out? Is that already carbon neutral? If not, could it be made carbon neutral. DHL and the Royal Mail and Shopify all have offerings. In the membership at the moment, we’re having a big chat about which of them are better than others, which are sort of genuinely carbon neutral, and which of them are using a bit of offsetting to perhaps greenwash and we haven’t quite reached a conclusion yet so if you get there before we do, please feel free to share that with me.

So then seedlings really need accountability and community support, and somewhere to share the challenges and share the wins. And again, these are things that we really look to do in the membership. So sort of holding each other gently accountable, and offering tonnes of support and kind of coming together over the challenges and celebrating the wins. And then also, it’s really important at this stage to have trusted information and resources that are free from greenwashing. If you have identified yourself as a seedling and you would like to move towards becoming a sapling, there are three things that you can do today. One is to draft your own environmental manifesto. So look up online, some examples of manifestos, the healthy one is amazing. There are lots of cool repair ones. And a manifesto is really a call to action. So it might be a series of statements of things you believe in, it might be a sort of picture of a better world. And you can then even design that and make it quite visual and pin it up on your wall, you might even want to share it on your website. The other thing is to sign up for living wage. So this means that everybody you pay formally, that only means PAYE employees. But you might choose to include freelancers and anybody in your supply chain and yourself, get paid enough to live on. And the living wage publishes sort of hourly rates every year, both within London and outside of London. They’re UK based. So you might have to sort of work out the equivalence locally if you’re not. To make sure that everybody’s being paid fairly and I always emphasise that this needs to include you. And if you are struggling with paying yourself a fair wage, out of the profits of your business, and I’d really recommend reading a book called Profit First, it’s a really helpful methodology to sort of apportion the money that comes into your business to tax to profit to your salary and to the costs of running the business. You don’t have to take it literally the percentages that it recommends are not set in stone, but it’s just an interesting approach and mindset. And then third thing you might want to do, if you’re hoping to move from seedling or sapling is to look into material specific certifications. So I mentioned FSC, which is the Forest Stewardship Council, which is specifically for wood. And then as I said, this fair mind, fair trade, there’s GOTZ, there’s lots of different certifications for different materials. So depending on what material you’re working in, have a look at some of those certifications and see if you think they’re valuable, see if you think they will be helpful for you. It might be that if you’re working very locally, actually, you know, you’re quite happy that your materials are responsibly sourced. If you’re using waste. There are almost no certifications for second life materials yet, but just look into it and make a decision. As I say this stuff is all about giving you a map, not dictating the action. So I want you to make decisions that work for you and align with your practice.

Then we have the saplings, and what saplings need are a community to share that progress, right? To really, this is that middle stage, so really to celebrate how far they’ve come boundaries and self care in place to prevent burnout because that’s a very real thing, particularly for saplings. They need inspiration from trees and forests that they can do it, they can get past this kind of middle hump. And that’s what a lot of the guest speakers in the membership do. And they need some support in developing the systems and processes around some of this stuff. So three things that you could do. And as I say, I’m not suggesting you do all three of these, just pick one. But three things you might want to do if you are hoping to move from sapling to tree. And the first is recognise and celebrate how far you’ve come. In fact, for anybody make a list of 10 things you’re already doing really well. And I think it’s so important. Positive psychology shows that our brains seek to replicate what we celebrate. So yes, it’s important for your well being and your just general sense of joy, but also, celebrating your success and giving yourself credit where it’s due actually means you’re more likely to achieve more of those things. The other thing that’s interesting to do, if you are a sapling looking to move towards tree is the initial B Corp impact assessment. It’s on their website, it’s free. And it will give you a sense of how far off you are. So in order to become a B Corp, you need to score 80 points out of 200 on their assessment. And I think it’s really useful just to just do the assessment and just see because if you get 40, you know, you’ve got a little way to go. If you get 70 or 90, then you know, maybe it’s worth looking into and moving towards getting that certification. The first couple of questions are really crucial, because each question you answer closes or opens up subsequent questions. So it might be worth getting a little bit of advice or doing a bit of googling just around those first few questions. But yeah, it’s a really useful tool. I did it and I’ve spent quite a bit of time kind of digging into where I could be doing things better as a result of taking that initial assessment. And then the other thing you might want to do is look into environmental product declarations or EPDs. And as I said, these are the lifecycle analysis on each individual product. So rather than your sort of behaviour as an organisation, as a company, as a practice, which the B Corp will look at the EPDs look at each individual product. So as I said, just one of those don’t try and do all three of them. And then trees need support with a B Corp and EPD process right? Inspiration about regenerative products, they need peer to peer support as well as one to one coaching and mentoring. And actually those things are valuable at any level and again are things I offer and opportunities to connect. So in order to turn trees into forest, we need to connect those trees with each other, right. The things you might want to do if you’re a tree and thinking about moving towards becoming a forest, I start thinking about PR and marketing support to tell your story. So start thinking about how you share some of this stuff to inspire other people and talk about what you’re doing with real credibility, you will need to complete the B Corp certification process. It is all going to change relatively soon. So if you’re in the process, it’s worth getting that submitted as soon as you can and work towards publishing EPDs not just on hero products, not just on the best sellers or the super sustainable ones, but on every single product. And if you are a forest, you will need one to one support and consultancy, and networks that enable that interconnected investment into the community and into smaller businesses. So finding out who those people are who are doing these sorts of things.

So that is the five stage path to sustainability, I hope that gives you a flavour of the whole journey, but also the sense that you don’t need to do it all at once. You can just take it one single step at a time. And if you’ve got any questions as I said, feel free to shoot me a DM on Instagram

OUTRO

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden. It is so lovely to know that there are people out there tuning into these conversations. If you found that interesting, I would love to connect with you on Instagram, I am on @katietreggiden.1. And if you’re a designer, maker, artist or crafts person who’s interested in sustainability and environmentalism, then please also follow @making_design_circular_ and both of those are in the shownotes. You can also follow my email newsletter there. I would be super grateful if you’re listening to this on an iPhone or iPad or other Apple device if you could leave us a review on Apple podcasts. I think that’s the only podcast platform that takes reviews, but it’s incredibly helpful to help people find us and make sure that more and more people are finding this message. So if you could take a couple of moments just to leave a review there that would be amazing. And I would also like to say a quick thank you to the incredible Kirsty Spain, who produces and edits this podcast and keeps me on track so that these episodes actually make it into your ears. So thank you very much, Kirsty.