Hello, welcome to another episode of Vet Chat, the UK's number one veterinary podcast. I'm Anthony Chadwick from the Webinarett, and I'm thrilled to have Sue Skeats on the line today, who is the founder of 100 Ways in 100 Days. As many of you know, I have a passion for sustainability.
And it's so exciting to have people that are attracted to some of the work that we're doing, and we get to speak to some really cool people and definitely Sue is in that category. Sue, amazing to speak to you, introduced by, a good friend of both of ours, Jade Stat, who's of course doing amazing work at Street Vets. But she was telling me about 100, .
Weighs in 100 days, so it'd be lovely to hear about that, but first, perhaps tell us how you came to that sort of light bulb moment of creating this, this great platform. Thank you very much, yeah, and it's so kind of you to invite me on, thank you. So my background, I think everybody in sustainability, not everybody, but a lot of people come from all sorts of different walks of life.
It's obviously such a kind of key issue for us all at the moment, but my own background. Actually in PR and marketing communications, and I worked for a number of years for major London agencies, and then latterly ended up with my own agency in Guildford for about 13 years. And, really loved it as a career, yeah, was, was worked on all sorts of things from kind of a food and drink, lots of food and drink actually, including champagne, which was fabulous, through to kind of retail, lots of leisure, but actually.
Quite a lot of clients along the way, were, kind of pet and vet clients, as I call them, and actually animals have always been a passion of mine, wildlife, etc. Has always been a passion. So it suited me really well.
So many years ago, I guess the first one that I worked with was, Pettlan and actually PR the, vet of the year competition for a few years for them and, had lots of fun and games with with them, and. So more recently other clients that I've worked with, have been people like, Mark Evans, who is a former RSPCA chief vet, who then actually became a TV personality and was doing quite a lot of work with Channel 4 on kind of pet behaviour and and dog behaviour and, and kind of natural, history and science. So we worked quite a lot together and, and so there was quite a lot of kind of veterinary stuff going on in the background there.
And I worked, in fact, actually how I made, met Jade Stat at, at Street Bet. I was actually working for the Dog Fest series of events, so like Glastonbury, but for dogs. And, so that was really interesting for, yeah, quite a number of their shows, and we also used to, PR the.
pet of of the year show up in the NEC, but a lot of the, things that were going on at all these shows were charities of one, shape or form, and, so that was obviously a kind of key component in the whole PR something that was gonna really interest the media and, and, not overly commercial voices, but. Yeah, just, just really interesting human and, and kind of animal interest stories. So, yes, I, I met Jade through that originally and then went on to work for, I hope I'm not gonna leave anybody out here, but, Republic of Cats, which is the cat spinoff of Tails.com, and, yeah, all sorts of, of, companies really.
So then, COVID hit and obviously the world was all a bit weird, I. I was still doing kind of PR stuff, but all of the events and things had, had obviously been canned. But I actually started working a lot more with Jade at that point because I'd done a bit of kind of pro bono work for her, through my agency anyway.
And then, she was doing just the most amazing job with setting up homeless hostels. So we worked together and, and got her loads of TV and things on those, and, hopefully some really good exposure and, and, you know. Some, some extra support out there for just an incredible charity.
But yeah, I was still trundling along, running my agency, and then I had a light bulb moment one day, and I just was walking out of the front door, on lunchtime, and there was a Deliveroo driver coming in and I thought, hm, that's a bit strange. I can see he's actually come on his moped, but he's bringing a package from a cafe that's literally about 3 minutes' walk away. And oh my goodness, yeah, and he's bringing a bubble tea and it's a plastic beaker and a plastic top and a plastic straw, and he's bringing it in not one but two plastic bags with a load of serviettes, and oh, there's a plastic knife and fork inside as well.
How ridiculously wasteful. Anyway, I said all this to the girl upstairs and about an hour or so later we had a shared kitchen area. And there were recycling bins and I saw the drink completely untouched in all its packaging glory in the landfill bin right next to paper recycling and card recycling.
And I just thought, my goodness, this girl's about 26, she's of the generation that's going to kind of inherit all of this mess. Why is it that she doesn't think to live more sustainably? What is it about people that, you know, they, they, yeah, live like that really.
So I thought there must be ways that people could change their behaviour for the better. And I just kept waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning, it was kind of gnawing away at me. And I had been working actually quite a lot with, an amazing psychologist at the University of Hartford.
On believability, so as humans, what we believe, why we believe things, and how you can harness that for really powerful communications. And I thought, well, with that knowledge that we've kind of been using as a PR agency to kind of make our campaigns more powerful, maybe what I could do is, use that knowledge and also kind of bolt it onto what I've been doing for my kind of. Virtually my professional career, which is making really kind of persuasive interesting campaigns that either are encouraging people to kind of buy a products or buy onto a service or potentially change their behaviour as well.
I thought maybe I could marry those two things up and look at creating an an e-learning platform because I've actually been looking at the UN who are saying, you know, with climate change at the moment, it's not just. We we can't just leave it to big business and governments. We all as individuals have to play our part, but also we have to unite, and that really is going to create massive, combined social or, you know, impact.
So I thought maybe this could be an idea, and I kept waking up, as I say, thinking there must be 100 little ways that people could change their behaviour. And I thought, oh, OK, right, 100 ways in 100 days, let's see if that's the thing. So that's where the kind of the idea started.
Brilliant, so that's excellent. Yeah, Pet Plan is a great company. I know, they're already really working towards net zero as well, so and a lot of animal companies I think have a, Desire also to help the environment because of course if the environment is messed up, then humans and animals are going to find it more and more difficult to live in those areas in, you know, in in a good way, aren't they?
Oh, absolutely, I think it's so so so important. I mean, we're all kind of linked aren't we? And yeah, I think it's important for all of us.
We talk a lot now about 11, health, and it is very much human, animal and planet as well. And I absolutely agree with you. I think it's so important that, you know, whilst people will look to government and big business, there is a huge responsibility that we have as individuals and those little actions that we take, if enough people take those actions that adds up to a huge amount.
And of course, as individuals, if enough of us say to. You know, a company where we don't like the fact that you're using too much packaging, that can have a big effect as well. But I think if I've got it right, the 100 ways in 100 days is very much more, let's look at what our own responsibilities are, because I think there is a tendency for us sometimes to try and bat responsibility to somebody else, isn't there?
We talk a lot about our rights. But not necessarily as much about our responsibilities. So it's something I really like about the the platform that you're doing that and, and I think the why is really powerful as well, and, and often that little light bulb moment that you have, which is the, this packaging, also not good from a mental health perspective and an exercise perspective, cause walking out of the building and down the street.
Is really important and I suppose maybe COVID has taken some people out of that habit because they were used to. Being at home and having things delivered to them. So, it's a really interesting story and it sounds like you've already started to make some great progress, .
So, so tell us a little bit more about how the actual platform and how the programme actually works. So, yeah, I, fairly early on started talking to people at the University of Surrey about putting something together because I had. A whole load of ideas, so, yeah, all, all sorts of things in daily life, which I'll I'll come on to in a moment.
But I actually thought, if I come up with lots of kind of interesting little lessons and and nuggets that people can do, I'm not a climate scientist. I, I know also from my PR career that actually if you make a statement about something, it's got to be correct because if you don't get something correct, there's. Always going to be people who have got an opinion on it or will tell you it's wrong and so on.
So I really, really wanted complete kind of credibility in the programme. So the doctoral college actually at the university have been incredible in terms of their support and they funded, PhD researchers to look at a whole framework of sustainability so that if we make any claims about anything. It's, it's got to have kind of, basically gone through a whole kind of tick box process, that there is proper academic backup for all the claims that we make, or it comes from a really, kind of reputable charity or NGO, that kind of thing.
So we've got, although it's kind of a bit like a pyramid, you'll have a kind of a fun fact. About something and what to do with it. There's kind of layers and layers underneath that actually are linked into, both, kind of academic research or whatever, as I say, but also the UN Sustainable Development Goals as well.
They kind of speak to all of those. And plus we've got a kind of element of psychology as well. So my old psychologist.
That I mentioned a while ago that I worked with in my PR career had actually retired. So what the university agreed to do was actually get one of their psychologists to completely rewrite that report. So we look at things like fake news and stuff, which is all about kind of what we believe and what we kind of take in and absorb and act upon.
So that's been really, really super helpful. And I think in terms of behaviour change, what we've been working on quite a lot is the fact that the more little tiny, kind of steps you take, it just becomes so much easier to kind of fit them into your daily habits. And if everybody is doing the same thing around you, it just becomes normalised and it actually is so much easier to do.
And what we found when piloting 100 ways, and we'll give you some examples in a minute cos otherwise it's all. Bit theoretical is that actually we've trialled it with various companies from kind of ad agencies through to financial services organisations through to kind of housing associations and actually the employee engagement of people getting together across kind of departments and ages and demographics and things has been really, really strong because they've actually got something that's kind of fun and engaging that's in common, and it sets up kind of conversations that maybe wouldn't have happened otherwise, . And I think also .
You know, one of the things is sometimes it's seen as being a little bit boring, whereas also now, a lot of these things that you're discussing actually make financial sense as well and that they will actually save, save money and. I suppose one of the things I talk a lot about is that for a lot of companies and even talking to big companies, it can be, we don't, we, we, we're worried about this whole ESG area and we want to get more involved, but we just don't know where to start. And actually, the, I think it's a Chinese proverb, the, the journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step.
And actually once you take that first step, you know, maybe you stop using plastic one you drink bottles and you think about using a soda stream instead or whatever, or if you just use tap water. That's a first step and then you can add another step and another step, which is this nice thing of the programme of they are single steps, which presumably the majority are pretty easy to do. But as you get onto the journey and as you're enjoying the journey, you will become a bit more ambitious in the things that you do.
So solar panels, you know, which I've had on my house for 14 years, probably aren't people's first step, but at some point. As they learn more and more and they get more excited about it, they're prepared to invest more of their time and money into this journey that they're on. Yeah, and I think going back to your point about the money saving thing, 60% of all the, the ways we call the modules, that we have on the programme are actually money savers, so it could be either for your company or for you personally.
So, one of my actually one of the things that goes down really well is we've got a module called Ban the Byro, and actually if you look at all the plastic pens that we've all got in our cars and our drawers and, you know, hanging around the kitchen and things. 1.6 billion of those go into landfill and states alone every year.
So this, this particular way looks at, will look at more sustainable writing. So for instance, instead of plastic pens, look at maybe, using pencils or they've got these great kind of, endlessly refillable, fountain pens now that don't have single use plastic cartridges. But actually the housing association that we were working with very recently.
I mean they do have a lot of employees, agreed, but they said, goodness me, we've just checked with our stationary people, and if we switched pencils instead of plastic pens in one year alone we could save £700. And it was quite extraordinary. And then, so when we, we actually surveyed, people who were actually living in the housing association, homes, and they did a programme as well and actually.
4 and 5 of them said that they saved up to £10 a week just by being more green. So 520 pounds a year is not, you know, chicken feed in this day and age, and actually 1 in 6 say that it's saved them up to £25 a week, so 1300 pounds a year. So I think even if you're not thinking particularly, you know, with a green head on, it makes sense from that point of view alone and actually if we can just make it really easy for people, it's a kind of win-win really.
I think also now in some ways it doesn't matter whether you're a committed environmentalist like I have been for the last 40 years and have done things because it just felt like the right thing to do, or you're doing it to save money, provided that it's helping the planet. I don't, I don't care which way people come at it because we just need more and more people to. Be thinking in a way that is sustainable for the planet, either as a main focus or as a byproduct.
I completely agree with you and probably, you know, there's lots of ways of skinning a cat, it's probably the worst possible expression that I could come up with with a veterinary forum, but I think, you know, the, the, the, yes, that's the principle really, isn't it? And I think, you know, it's just all about making things really interesting for people, and making it easy, so we've got another. One where we've actually, clingfilm is, is in the main horribly unrecyclable.
So we kind of look at that actually there is recyclable clingfilm, in my opinion. It doesn't work particularly well, but we've got a rap artist doing the bad rap rap. So that's just really good fun and he talks about different ways that you can kind of, you know, cook and preserve your food and those kind of things.
And then we've got, we look at, soap, which actually, uses, I think, 10 times less, water than. And liquid soaps and those kind of things. So we've got a really kind of cute little kind of beauty video on that.
And then we've got another one, I don't know how well this would work in a, a kind of veterinary practise setup, but called wear the your oldest clothes to Work Day, and that looks at fast fashion and if it was a country, it'd be the 3rd largest polluter in the world. So actually everybody kind of rocks up for a bit of a dress up day or even if they're working from home. And we had one lady wearing her auntie's 30 year old Zara.
And somebody else has got a vintage shirt, somebody else has got, you know, they're kind of going away jacket from their wedding. And actually, again, it's one of those things that people just then end up swapping notes and and just having a bit of fun, and it takes all the scary stuff away from it and actually makes it achievable for people. So I think, yeah, whichever way you can get people and there's lots of different, there's food and drink modules, whichever is kind of, you know, gets people's interest, is, you know, all, all to the good, I think, as far as I'm concerned.
Well, I, I was reading an article just recently in the last week about Imperial leather sales are shooting up at the moment in their, in their soap. Oh, I didn't know that. So you're having an effect.
Oh, that was another old client of mine actually, so. Well, that's amazing. Nobody will know who Imperial Leather is of a certain age, but you need to know, go out and look for Imperial Leather in your supermarkets, because as you say, it uses a lot less plastic than than buying the the the liquid soap.
And some of it can look so cool in your bathroom as well, some of these kind of handmade ones and things, but . Fantastic, and I must admit I do keep hold of clothes for a long time working on the principle that at some point they will come back into fashion. But they do, it's, it's, yeah, circular, isn't it?
And then, I think probably, there are lots that are, you know, apart from pens and, and that kind of thing, that are very kind of much more workplace orientated. Well, actually, no, it's for home as well. So, I didn't actually know this until recently, but, there's, dark data, which is all of the data out there that, is single use.
So basically all sits in the cloud and everybody thinks. Oh, I've got a paperless office. This is amazing.
But actually there is a carbon footprint to all that data that's swimming around there. So I think, there were some figures that came out of Loughbry University to say that 65% of data generated is never used, and 15% is out of date as well. So, I mean, there are loads and loads of things that you can kind of do about that, but yeah, data, it's, it's kind of, I'm just looking at my notes here, .
It's predicted to account for more carbon emissions than the automotive, aviation and energy sectors combined, in, in kind of short order. So it's just little things like when you get excess emails, don't just delete them actually if it's a newsletter or something, and you're not gonna read, unsubscribe because then that stops it swimming around in the ether there. It's things like not see seeing all your colleagues if you don't need to.
Even things like, and I'm probably the worst exponent of this, but, you know. Kind of sending back smiley faces to people and, you know, have a great weekend and all the rest of it. But it almost even goes down to the, without being rude, trying to kind of cut all your unnecessary communications to a minimum really.
And it might be that you have a, you know, a dark, a dark data digital detox on a Friday afternoon or something and just commit a bit of time. But yeah, there's lots of things both individuals and companies can do, with those kind of things too. Yeah, it's something we very much look at at webinar vets for our carbon footprint, which we've measured.
And it's difficult because of course the company is now much more virtual, so we have people living in different parts of the country and even one or two who live abroad. So, we're looking, we look at, you know, data centres that are using sustainable energy, etc. But you're right, I think there is a tendency to think there is no carbon footprint there and of course, of course there is one of my .
Well, two things, interesting things. I was at sustainability Live, and one of the data centres was actually producing so much heat that they actually used it, to heat a swimming pool for the local council. So there is that circularity that we can make use of as well.
But then looking at things, I've always been very nervous about all of the . Of the, virtual currencies like Bitcoin, the amount of electricity to produce the, makes it makes me very nervous of being, you know, at all involved in that. And in fact, one of my, challenges for this year is to get 300 vets to put solar panels on the roof because we talk a lot about, you know, get your energy from a sustainable energy provider like Good Energy or Octopus.
But obviously, to do that we need to have more and more people producing sustainable energy, and obviously that can be done in a big way, you know, with wind farms and solar farms. But actually we all have roofs and again as you said, if you have some money to invest at the moment. And you invest it in a bank where you get a 5% return, but inflation is at 5%, and in fact the money is, is slowly devaluing, whereas if you stick it into something that produces some common goods, be it renewable energy, once you've paid that off, which now I think you can pay off within 5 or 6 years, of course then it is money that is.
Is, you know, not only, is being invested every year, you're making money from the electricity, but it's also good for the planet as well, so I think renewable energy is a huge part of this, but obviously it's not an easy first step, not for everybody because the expense of it. I, I would love to see more houses being built just with solar panels on their roof to start with. Yeah, it's surprising that it hasn't kind of you know, gained more traction already really, but I think some areas of the construction industry are quite kind of slow to catch up, but I mean others are doing amazing things.
I have been talking to, yeah, lots, lots of different ones who have, you know, have green running absolutely through their DNA, but yeah, it's all all lots of stuff to work, work towards, I think. I think this is definitely something we've been very passionate about, you know, before I started Webinar vet, but it's been very much a part of our DNA and we're doing it because it's the right thing to do. But it's interesting because I've been talking a lot about this and, you know, in fact, Surrey University came to our veterinary green discussion forum, you know, a great, I think advocates of, of green energy and and just of being more sustainable.
But I think also companies are more and more being drawn and individuals obviously to companies that seem to give a damn about the environment as well. So those of those companies who who jump on this early, I think there will be a competitive. Advantage towards it, won't there?
Oh, there's huge amounts of er research and evidence out there at the moment that says in terms of, yeah, talent recruitment, it's absolutely a big win, keeping people for longer, it's, it's a big win. And also I think, you know, for procurement. If you're trying to kind of sell anything, then, you know, procurement departments and things are really requiring, people to show green credentials and show that they're on the, the route to net zero.
They're not just kind of planning it, but they're actually doing things about it now as well, which probably isn't quite so relevant in the kind of veterinary side, but, . Yeah, I think it's gonna be absolutely everywhere, but certainly in terms of recruitment and, and I think also customers as well, if you've got a green practise, I mean, personally for me, if I had 3 vets near me and I was going to choose one and one was kind of obviously green and, and, you know, obviously a good practise as well, that's probably the one that I would go for. And I'm sure a lot of people are gonna be kind of voting with their feet and their paws and things like that.
I love the idea of the pens and I loved when I was at school writing with an ink pen, and they have rather fallen out of fashion to the Bro. I think it was a Hungarian chap called Biro who I know I'm I'm, yeah, hopefully I won't get sued at some point, but. Yeah, yeah, but, obviously that's a really great tip, .
But perhaps give us a couple of other tips that would be useful for vets, or for vet employees that are easy for us to do. Maybe what, what are your three tips that you want to impart as we come towards the end of the podcast? Yeah, so I think probably one of the easiest things that you can do is .
I don't know if if everybody's heard of Ecosia yet, but essentially, rather than default going to Google or one of the others, Ecosia actually works on 200% renewable energy, so it has its own wind farms and and solar and all the rest of it. So it actually puts energy back into the grid, but for every, I think it's 45th. You do, it plants a tree.
So, you can actually see a little kind of counter, on your, kind of monitor so you can kind of keep tabs on what you've been doing. But that for me is just one of the easiest things because I mean we all search for stuff so much of the time and actually you can do it from a corporate point of view as well, so that you can actually kind of sign up, . And then again, it's, it's just great for your kind of corporate credentials if you're talking to, you know, customers, stakeholders, etc.
Etc. And, they're, they're kind of growing and growing in strength. So I think, you know, with all of these things, people could probably say, well, you know, Google, it's so big, it's so, you know, AI it's amazing and I think.
Obviously AI it's machine learning, so if you can't find something on Ecosia, maybe you go to Google for a quick search, but then go back to Ecosia cos then it will have kind of learned that it's searching for those things. So the more people use it, the better it gets, but I have found that it's just been amazing, the couple of years that I've been using it. And then there's things like, I just, I, I use Ecosia on my, on my phone, so I was just looking for my phone now, but I don't think it's here because I was just going to show Ecosia on my phone, but for those of you who are video podcasting rather than just listening, but yeah, cosy is really great.
And then just two more completely different ones again. So, a lot of people are still buying bottled water and, certainly it's no better for your health, and there's all sorts of kind of scientific evidence to show that. But actually if you're buying bottled water, it's 500 times more expensive than if you're going to get it out of the tap.
So it's like paying I think 1500 pounds for a pint of beer or something, which is a bit crazy. So the tip there really is just to, yeah, always keep your kind of refillable water bottle by your keys, and, and your phone so that you don't kind of forget it when you go out, is probably the easiest one. And then the other thing that actually, it's not in the programme at the moment, but we're doing a module on which is definitely kind of gaining quite a bit of interest at the moment, is actually greening your pension, .
Because, they, they do say, and again, there's quite a lot of, there was a big study at the beginning of this year, that suggests that making your pension green is actually 21 times more positive than cutting your carbon footprint, than stopping flying, going vegetarian, and switching to a green energy provider combined. That was from, I don't know if everybody knows Richard Curtis from, Love Actually, and, and the, the kind of brains behind those, but he's set up Make My Money Matter, which is a really interesting campaign you can go online and check that out. But I think actually if you're talking to your employer or if you're in HR or whatever, one of the easiest things is actually just look at, you know, what your pension provider is doing because, a lot of pensions are kind of switching to the more .
Kind of green aspects, and actually if they're not, then there's plenty of others who are doing the right thing and, you know, not necessarily, or not at all investing in fossil fuels and and things like that, but actually things that are good for the planet, but are also gonna get you a return for your pension. So that's a super super powerful thing to do and. I think particularly a lot of young people, they don't really think of pensions, but actually when they see what a lot of their pension is potentially going to pay for, which is a lot of bad stuff a lot of the time that just, you know, it, it's not on the radar, that's certainly an easy thing that you can do.
One of the things that has actually worked out really well on the platform as well, which isn't, you know, necessarily to do with just sustainability, was the fact that one of the. We've got for instance is called nurturing nature and it looks at biodiversity and the power of nature, but it's actually quite a kind of mindfulness piece. It, it's got kind of birdsong and babbling brooks and and that kind of thing.
And people have really, really got into that in a big way. We've got a chat function on the platform and people have been, chatting with each other, talking about how important nature is to them and . And, you know, in today's stressful, you know, lives and whatnot, how much, you know, animals and nature and things are important to them.
So we've had people kind of say, you know, I'm, I'm just signing up to my local wildlife trust, this weekend, anybody got any other hints and tips and, and just saying how much that kind of getting back into nature is, is really helping them cope with so many everyday stresses and strains and things. That's brilliant, Sue, and I think even just sometimes slowing down to stroke your dog or cat can have a massive difference as well, can't it? Oh yeah, I mean it's, it's been shown endlessly, hasn't it, and we all as animal lovers know that instinctively, but yeah, there's just nothing like it is they're getting out into nature, cuddling a dog or a cat.
And Just a final thing, Sue, obviously if people are interested in knowing more about 100 ways and 100 days, both as individuals, and I think you said that a lot of companies are also using it, how might they find out more about it? So, yes, the website is www.100ways.eco and that's 100 as in the the number of 100.
So www.100ways.eco.
So primarily. At the moment, or, or up to now, the platform has been aimed at employee organisations, so, companies for their employees and it doesn't matter if, if they're kind of, you know, chairman or if it's, you know, reception or whatever, everybody, it's, it's kind of works for everybody, but also, hopefully by the time this comes out, or certainly a couple of days afterwards, we're actually going to. To get a new Hunter Was programme, which is, designed for individuals.
So the, the company one at the moment runs over a three month period. And, and that's great for kind of behaviour change and what our psychologist has told us kind of really helps things sync in with people. But also the, the, the express one for individuals it's got a lot of that as well, but it's just, kind of condensed into a shorter time because I think that's just much easier.
People to kind of jump in and, and really get on with it. So that's a, that'll be more, just over a month. And that will be available to buy on the website, in a couple of weeks.
So, yeah, love people to go there and we've got lots of interesting stuff about sustainability and amazing people doing amazing things on our blog. Yeah, follow us there, sign up for more information and, yeah, we'd love to have chats with people and, and see what we can do together. Fantastic, Sue, I think it's amazing what you're doing also just.
Promulgating that message that the individual matters in this and that individuals can do a massive amount as well. So, thank you for everything that you're doing and it's been lovely having you on the podcast. It's been such a great opportunity and so lovely to chat to you, thank you so much.
Thanks, Sue, and thanks everyone for listening. This is Anthony Chadwick, the webinar vet. This has been another episode of that chat.
Take care, see you.
