Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinar Bet welcoming you to another episode of The Chat and. As you know, we've been talking a lot about sustainability over the last period, and I'm, I'm so pleased to have not the god, but definitely a goddess of sustainability. She's #2 in the podcast charts for sustainable issues.
I'm very proud of being #1 for veterinary podcasts in the UK, but this is a completely different stratospheric effect, and you didn't even know it, did you, Jen? I'm so unstrategic, I'm so. Well, and I, I don't want to sound smart, because the only reason I know is clever people like Charlie tell me that if you look at Feedspots and you go to sustainable podcasts, you will see that there's a podcast from Canada number one, and then Wilshire is very definitely.
The number 2, so. Flying the flag. Well done.
Of course, you know, we all know Jen as as a writer of the book Sustainable. It was it sustainable-ish? Sustainable-ish Living Guide, yeah.
Living Guide, that's right. And, and obviously your podcast is sustainable-ish as well. Tell us a little bit about that journey, how come you've become this eco-warrior?
Where, where did that start? Was that from childhood or was there a sudden realisation that hm, we've got to start doing something about this? Yeah, I don't, I think I was probably like lots of kids in the.
Sort of, or lots of teenagers in the 90s kind of in, you know, against animal testing and we had the ozone layer and things like that, didn't we, we had the hole in the ozone layer anyway. But certainly at uni it wasn't on my radar at all. And then I think, you know, sort of leaving uni and starting a job and .
You know, meeting my husband, like, yeah, I think we thought we were pretty green because we did our recycling. But then I think that was what we were told, that was all you had to do to be green, you know, in the sort of 90s and the early 2000s. I was like, oh, amazing.
You just, you do, you just can do your recycling. That's amazing. Well done you.
And, you know, my parents were typical, I guess, sort of baby boomers, and you know, my dad worked in the city in the 80s, you know, it was like they, they, I remember my dad saying to me, cause we, then we started this year buying nothing new, and he was like, why are you going into charity shops? He just didn't get it at all, not, you know. But yeah, that's how, my sort of journey, I guess, started, which is a cliche, but, With a year buying nothing new, so that was 2012, we did that, we started at September 2012 through to August 2013.
The kids were something like 4 and 2, something like that, so you know, you didn't get too much of a say in it. And my husband didn't get too much of a say in it. I just, I just kind of decided this is what we were gonna do, but I think, you know, he, I, I'm someone who, I don't know if you're the same, Antony, you probably are.
I have a lot of amazing ideas in air quotes, you know, and then, and I sort of start things, and I'm very good at starting and not quite so good at following through. So I think he thought, you know, oh yeah, well, we'll do this for a month or two, and she'll forget about it, and then I didn't, but it really. I didn't do it, you know, to, to somehow, as you say, become this big eco-warrior or anything like that.
I think I was probably, like lots of people might be feeling a little bit now, like looking away from the climate crisis, not deliberately, but just I'm busy, I'm overwhelmed, I've got two young kids, I've, this is, this is a huge issue, what difference can I possibly make? Surely if it was a big deal the government would be doing something and you know, this was 10 years ago, so it didn't have quite the same. Level of sort of consciousness that it does now, and, and it, you know, I hadn't in any way joined the dots between what we were buying, what we were throwing away, the impact it was having, who might have made our staff, and I think so much of what we were buying was very unconscious.
I didn't really think about it other than where there might be a sale on, where we might be able to get it cheapest. It didn't occur to me to. Look for it secondhand or to look on eBay or, you know, anything like that.
And this, the fact that we then had, I say had, you know, as a sort of self-designated rules, had to find things secondhand, just forced that real slowing down. There was, you couldn't do that sort of knee jerk, you know, into Lidl's for a pint of milk, come out with a fence sprayer type thing. You had to do, we had to stop and think about where we were getting something from and how we were going to get it, and therefore, did we Actually really want it that much and all those sorts of things.
And it, and maybe it just gave me the time to, to join the dots and to, to realise that actually, you know, it's not OK that they can sell 3 t-shirts for 5 quid or 2 chickens for a fiver or whatever. You know, there's this assumption, I think, or certainly I had it, that if, if these businesses are allowed to do it, it must be OK, because surely they must be looking after the people and the planet and these things. And then you're suddenly like, Oh, No, they're not, no.
So yeah, that was, that was, a very long answer to how did that all get started. No, but it's really, it's really great, and I think it, it's sort of this whole one health ESG as well, you know, that the environment is part of it, but actually. You know, we have to care about people and if people are making t-shirts in, in, in sweatshop type conditions for us to be able to wear them twice before we throw them away, then none of that is right, is it?
No, no, no, no, so many, so many, you sort of realise so many of our systems are. Not fit for purpose anymore if they ever were, but it's, you know, it's very easy, I think in the, in the, you know, in a, in a relatively wealthy nation in a developed part of the world to, to, it's out sight out of mind a lot of the time, isn't it? Yeah, no, I, and, and really out of that sort of year without buying anything new, was that where the, the kernel of the idea of the book came about?
Maybe tell us a little bit about that whole book writing process because it's, it's quite a commitment, especially from somebody, who probably is a bit like me, has loads of great ideas and covers and likes to start things but doesn't always finish them, you know, writing the book, you've got to have an ending to it, haven't you? Yes, and that's what you mean that I think if I'd. Self-published, I probably would never have done it because I wouldn't have had a, you know, that hard deadline.
So I, when we did our year buying, I think, you know, I decided I was gonna write a blog about it, and, probably lots of vets will relate to this, you know, having had to concentrate on sciences that weren't maybe my natural kind of path I would have gone down had I not wanted to go to vet school, I sort of was like, wow, I, I actually really enjoy writing and I, you know, sort of remembered that I used to quite enjoy writing essays in history and all those sorts of things, and. Felt, and again, this might sound, you know, this is a bit of a cliche, but I did feel like I found my voice. I found my thing, I found my, I was able to sort of express myself.
And so I ended up blogging every day during that year, which was by far the hardest part of it, I think. I don't know why I decided I had to do that, with two, you know, two kids who weren't at school yet and all that sort of thing. and I, and everybody said to me, well, everybody, a lot of people said to me afterwards, Well, you know, you ought to write that, turn that into a book.
And I said, Yeah, yeah, that's great. But I don't know how you write a, you know, how do you, well, you know, I could probably figure out how to write a book, but how do you even go about getting it published? And it's just a whole nother, world, you know?
I was like, Well, I don't really know what to do, so I sort of didn't do much about it. And then I did a talk at Bristol Festival of Nature. I think this is 2015, and got, I got an email afterwards from a literary agent saying, oh, my husband came to see your talk, and have you ever thought of writing a book, and I'd love to chat to you about it.
And I was like, oh my God, yes, that'd be amazing. So I went to meet up with her and, and the what we discussed was almost, you know, a kind of memoiry type of the year, that sort of thing. And she literally, you know, held my hand, walked me through this is how you write a proposal, this is what you have to put in it, you know, and, and when she was sort of happy with it, we signed a contract and then, she pushed it out and it had a little bit of interest, but nothing really, and it's such an agonisingly kind of slow process, you know, you wait for months and then you get a sniff of interest and then they want another bit of information and.
And I just had a bit of a paddy. It was like, nobody wants to publish my book. And had a bit of a sulk about it.
And then I think it was 2018, I was like, I really do want to write this book. And, went back to Kate, my agent, went back to the proposal, redid it in the, the sort of format it is now, which is, very kind of, you know, there's 1212 chapters, 12 different areas of everyday life that we look at from food to fashion to family. And, yeah, and then it, you know, it all goes quiet again, and then had, I think I remember having either a phone call or an email from Kate saying, just before the summer holidays, Bloomsbury are interested and going, oh my God, but the editor wants to talk to you.
Wants to meet you. All right, OK, yeah. You know, if she says to you pass, say how high.
But she can't meet you till after the school holidays, till after the summer holiday. It's like, Oh, God. So having to wait like the whole of the summer holidays.
And then, went and met up with her, and she really liked it, but then, you know, they, they have to go back and get it through marketing and finance, and, you know, they have to get all the, because they have to make sure it's a viable, or that they're gonna get their money back, basically, on it. . And then actually, when they then said, yes, I then, I had 3 months to write it.
So the actual writing pro, you know, the, the agonising long drawn out bit was the sort of getting the, the contract, and then the actual writing bit was really short. And then they sit on it for another year before it then gets published while they edit it and, you know, type layer. Is that the right word?
Typeset it, all those sorts of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was a really long process, but the intense bit I had to do was really short.
I suppose also a book that isn't fashionable in 2015 can very much be fashionable in 2019, and it is, you see this when you go into bookshops, certain themes start to arise, and I suppose sustainability in a sense has become cool, hasn't it? Yeah, I mean, I think in 2015 there there weren't. Very few books out there about sustainability, about, you know, sustainable living.
And now, as you say, it feels like they need a whole section in the bookshops for them. They're still a bit not sure quite where to put them, sometimes they're in DIY, sometimes they're in gardening, sometimes, you know, it needs a proper dedicated section, but there are, you just look on Amazon and there are so many books out there, which is, you know, which is great, it shows, as you say, the, they're kind of, I guess, you know, it means that they're a viable economic option for, for, for publishers to make, so there must be a demand for them. It, it's obviously, you know, you're a great evangelist for sustainability.
There's a danger, isn't there, with any evangelical organisation that it can become quite hectoring and actually put people off. So how, how do you see that within yourself? Do you see that we need to really just hit people with a stick, or do you think we should be encouraging people with carrots and with.
You know, with, with words that kind of don't push them to the perspective of it's all doom and gloom, but at the same time, you know, don't tell everybody it's OK. How do we, how do we kind of get that right, how do we get that right flavour if you like. Yeah, and I don't know if I have got it right.
The, the reason I talk about sustainable ish the whole time is because I feel like that ish is the really important bit, that's the bit that hooks people in. When you talk about sustainability. A lot of people will glaze over.
It sounds super dull. It sounds like you're gonna be told off. It sounds like you're gonna be, you know, not allowed to do all the things that you, that make life enjoyable.
But as soon as you kind of say sustainable-ish, you almost see people's shoulders drop. They're like, Oh, they, they get it. They get the fact that it means that they can have a go, they can get it wrong, they can do it imperfectly.
They don't need to be vegan and live off grid and knit their own yoghurt and, you know, all those kinds of things, because there's so many stereotypes of ground. And green living that lots of us probably don't even aspire to. And there's, you know, there's very much feels like there's that kind of them and us, and, you know, Boris doesn't help, does he?
You like the whole mung bean eating, bunny huggers, all that kind of thing. And actually, what I really, the message I really sort of want to, or, or strive to put out is that, like, this is for everyone. Everyone can get on board with this.
Everybody can do a little bit, and lots more people will then go on and do a bit more. But it's a bit like, And somebody, you know, people do. Not have a go, but, you know, people challenge me on that and say, it's not enough.
You know, it's sustainable-ish isn't enough. We'll never make the changes that we need to. We'll never get there quick enough.
And I said, Yeah, but if you came to me and I was sat on the sofa, eating a bar of chocolate, watching a box set and said, You've got to run a marathon tomorrow, I'd go, No, I don't, like, absolutely not a chance. But if you said to me, you came to me and said, You're gonna run a marathon in 6 months' time, and. You know, I'm gonna do it with you.
Here's a whole bunch of people. We're all gonna do it together. And here's a, you know, a step by step training plan, and look, the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna go and see if your trainer's still fit.
I'll be like, Oh, yeah, maybe I could do that. So, you know, people, a, a proportion of people will go much, much further and do your But if we never get them started, we'll never know. And actually most of us start with a 5K rather than a marathon, don't we?
Exactly. No, I, I think it, I think it's really important and I, I love that sort of idea that you've got, and I, I think also. Talking about it and saying, you know, we, I have, I have solar panels on my roof, you know, I talk about that, people see that I've got solar panels on my roof, I think also.
As vets, you know, we're seen as leaders of the community in our practises, and people see when they walk through that we've got a little wildlife meadow or garden in the front, and then they see solar panels on the roof and they can see that we're doing other things. All of that matters, doesn't it? And perhaps sometimes British we can be a bit diffident and not, you know, blow our own trumpets.
But actually the PR side, actually, the more people that you can see are doing this, it actually makes it easier for people to come on board, because most people, you know, you have the early adopters like yourself, but most of us are in that kind of middle ground, you know, mass adoptation and then there's always gonna be some laggards who, you know, whatever happens, you know, they're not gonna believe that that there is a climate problem and, and, you know, probably won't change things, but actually. Those small numbers at first can start revolutions, can't they? Oh yeah, and you know this whole the, the, the, the, the thing with the solar panels, it is apparently one of those, contagious behaviours.
So once one person in a, in a street or an area puts up solar panels, then, you know, you will see more and more of them pop up, and it's a bit like, electric vehicles as well, like we're, we've got. Electric car and you know, once people see someone they know driving an electric car and they can ask them all their questions and they can say, you know, oh well, come in and have a spin and have a go at it and you know, and see how, you know, then, then it takes away a lot of those barriers that you might be worrying about, but. I think it's entirely accurate what you're saying about, you know, we don't, probably lots of us are already doing quite a lot of stuff.
We might not think we are, but actually one of the first things I always get people to do whenever I, when any of my courses or anything like that is to make a ta da list rather than a to do list. So like, just sit and brainstorm for 5 minutes all the changes you've already made, because, you know, I have people come on and go, I shouldn't really be here. I'm not really very green.
I haven't done, and I'm like, right, you know, and they'll get to 20 really easily, you know, and, and we're very. You know, it's a very human thing, I think, very quick to forget about all the great stuff we've done and then to just berate ourselves for all the stuff we haven't done. And maybe we feel like we can't sort of talk to other people about the changes that we've made because.
We don't think we're doing enough or that then they'll have a go at us for, oh, but you still eat meat, don't you? Or you still got a, you know, oh, I saw you, you flew on holiday last year, or those sorts of things. So I think sometimes we feel this expectation of perfection and therefore we can't, talk about it.
And I think this applies to businesses as well. We can't, sort of talk about it or share what we're doing because we're worried that other people are going to have a go at us for. Not doing it perfectly, but it just sort of plays into this vicious cycle that we think we're the only ones doing anything and no one else cares about it, because no one else is talking about it.
But actually, all the studies show there's about 75% of us who are worried about the climate crisis. I was listening to another great podcast a couple of weeks ago, with Katherine Hayhoe, if anyone follows her, she's absolutely amazing climate scientist and communicator, and she said, You know, all the studies across the US and the UK are saying, you know, 75% of people are worried about the climate crisis, only about 8% of people are what she calls activated, and so, you know, and that's kind of actively talking about it or, you know, sharing what they're doing and all that sort of thing, and I guess, so, so we don't actually. When we worry about having conversations with people, and we're worried that we're going to end up in an argument with a climate denier, we're probably not, you know, we may well do if we're really unlucky, but the people we're talking to are probably already worried and feeling the same way we do.
They just don't really know what to do or where to start. And so actually, that makes it feel much easier that we've, you know, we're, we're not trying to change hearts and minds. They've already been changed.
We're just trying to, I say we're just, but we, we just need to activate those people. Yeah. I think.
You, you, we were talking just before this and you use that beautiful phrase pluralistic ignorance, which I liked from that one. The other one that, you know, I then shared with you, I think we, we, we heard about it at the Mind Matters initiative. If you don't do something, you can actually slip into this solastalgia, which is basically existential dread, where there's no point in doing anything, and it seems that.
A very negative and pessimistic and not very pleasant way of living your life, I suppose. Yeah, and, you know, we, we hearing more and more, aren't we, about climate anxiety, the, IPCC report that came out a couple of weeks ago, that actually was the first time that it mentioned the sort of mental health impacts of, climate events and things like that. But, you know, and I think there is a real risk, and, and I would imagine, you know, most people listening to this podcast probably feel some degree of, you know, if you pin me down and force me to think about it or Doctor David Attenborough, I will start to feel really quite anxious.
But it's trying to, to channel that anxiety into action, and it is yet another cliche, you know, I, the, the antidote to climate anxiety is climate action. But I think if you're really deep in it and it's absolutely kind of paralysing you and that sort of thing, then, you know, that's the level of anxiety that you need to get some help for. But trying to channel that and to use that as your motivation.
Because once you start taking action, it becomes another vicious circle, but more of a kind of positive feedback loop that you do something, you feel better about it, you realise your life's not 10 times harder than you thought it was gonna be, and so you do a little bit more and you do a little bit more and you meet other people who are doing things and it, and you create this new normal for you, and it suddenly you realise maybe it wasn't as hard as you thought it was gonna be. Mhm. And, you know, I, I see that now, I'm looking out and I've got my bird feeder up, lots of birds on there, RSPB seed.
There's some good things going on, you know, the biodiversity. I, I, I, I don't think anybody on the street would class my garden as being Victorian tidiness. I I like to have a bit of scruffiness going on and but but more things happen in that kind of.
Environment, don't they? Couple of other things, do you think that pandemic's obviously been a terrible thing, but do you think perhaps in 5 years we may look back and and say there was a silver lining in that there was a reset, it made people think a bit differently? Do you, do you see that in the people you talk to?
I, in that first lockdown where. Literally, it felt like the world stopped, didn't it? Like, you know, the vast majority of people were at home, because businesses didn't know how to sort of work in a COVID secure way, we didn't really know, you know, the whole, like God, yeah, we were only allowed out for an hour a day to go for a walk.
And you know, that sort of thing and and I really remember on social media people, you know, that reconnection with nature, that recognition of the importance of community and relationships and you know, all those sorts of things, . And it did feel like maybe this is it, maybe this is the great reset, maybe this is the opportunity. I don't know.
It feels like we've just sort of jumped headlong back into . You know, consuming as much as we ever were, back into work as busy as we ever were, but you know, now we've got this sort of hybrid situation or, you know, people are working from home and therefore that homework balance has become really blurred and, you know, so I think there definitely was an opportunity there and I think some things have changed, like, I really hope that there has been a reset in the way that business travel, air travel is viewed and that that, you know, will continue to just . That that won't go back to the levels it was.
I think a lot of people are desperate to get away for, for a summer holiday. You know, I know loads of people have gone away for Easter, I think probably lots of people will be going off away for the summer. I think it probably has changed some things, but I, I, I think we missed an opportunity, and I don't know how we could have, .
Come together to grasp that a bit more, I don't quite know how, how that could have how that would have happened. Mhm. What's your feelings on, I was talking to somebody before around offsetting, you know, obviously we've just been named as a green business and, and part of that strategy was very much recognising what our carbon is, we're a very straightforward business compared with a big veterinary practise, but I've offset that because I, I also think people talk about, you know, being carbon neutral by 2030 or 2050.
And actually We live in a very nature denuded country, we've, although some of the stuff we've done has been abroad. But actually, if we can sort of see the profit and loss as, you know, OK, we've made that cash, but there's been a cost to the environment, therefore we should give something back to the environment, you know, defending our ancient forests and so on, you know, our peat, lands that can obviously hold a lot of carbon. Do, do you think that obviously we can reduce our energy use, which is, you know, obviously important as well.
How do you see those two things coming together and, and working, you know, from a business or even a, you know, a, an individual perspective of carbon offsetting as a family? I think it's a really Potentially quite a difficult one because the danger is, I just, I mean, I saw, don't really see TV ads anymore, do you? If you're organised enough to set things to record and you can, you can fast forward through them.
But we were watching something and an advert came up for EasyJet, and they were like, we're offsetting all our flights. So we can carry on. Business as usual.
Come on, everyone, crack on, come on on your holidays, keep flying. That can't happen. There aren't enough, there isn't enough land on the planet for us to plant enough trees to offset the, you know, all the flight, if all the, companies decided that's what they were going to do, if all the businesses decided they were, you know, going to offset, we absolutely, you know, I think need to be reducing our, you know, and that's part of knowing what your footprint is, to know how you can, to know that you're coming in the right direction and reducing it, and you can do that as an individual and as a family as well.
. So absolutely need to be reducing, you know, and, and unfortunately that does mean that we are gonna have to make some sacrifices. We are at a stage, you know, had we done this in the 70s, we probably could have still had our cake and eaten it to a certain extent, but we, we can't now, and there are some sacrifices that we're going to have to make. Well it's a bit like that sort of, you know, the.
The the hen or the stag weekend in, you know, Malaga for 2 days. Those sort of trips make no sense, do they? Or, you know, the business trip for 2 days for where you could potentially do it via Zoom or whatever.
Yeah, the frequent flyer things and you know, it's this, it's the sort of excessive nature of everything, I think that's, you know, really, . You know, it's the thing we're really struggling against at the moment, and that's, you know, that's fashion, that's flying, that's, you know, just the size of our cars, you know, it's kind of everything in the last 20 years, it's gone a bit bonkers, hasn't it? But, you know, offsetting does have a place, and it will have to have a place in, you know, even as an individual, there are parts of our footprint that are.
Are made up of in, you know, infrastructure around the country, but, you know, we all have a tiny bit of the NHS's footprint, you know, because we use that. We all have a tiny bit of the motorway network. And, you know, those are things that we can't do anything about.
The, cement that's been used to build our homes, all those sorts of things. So actually, you know, none of us will get down to individuals or businesses will get down to zero. There is an inherent carbon emission from, you know, energy usage from pretty much everything that we do.
So there does need to be offsetting and we're probably also, you know, now I think we're in the, the scenario where we're also going to, having to look into carbon capture and all those sorts of things as well. But, so, so it absolutely needs to be done, where I think the danger lies is it's seen as an alternative, as a get out of jail free card to continue, business as usual when we can't afford to be doing that, that doesn't hit any of our targets. Huh.
I don't think it can be, it can be used, you know, for political PR reasons. You know, if you plant a tree, that doesn't actually sequester any carbon, probably for the first. No.
In 20 years, so we, we have to retain and our forests and, and our peatlands and our wetlands, don't we, where they, where carbon can be sequestered. Yeah, and that, you know, I think the other thing to note to, to note about offsetting is. You know, it needs to be done through a reputable company.
I, I spoke to somebody who has her own sustainable travel company, which feels like an oxymoron, doesn't it? But, and she did her dissertation for her PhD or something on offsetting and and really high percentage of the schemes were just not even worth the, the money that, you know, the paper they were written on. So, you know, looking for, I think it's literally called gold standard, isn't it?
And, you know, making sure you're doing it through a, a really reputable, thing, so that you're not just kind of paying for a bit of paper that says, we've planted a tree, and they've just chucked a tree in somewhere, and nobody's looking after it, and then it's been dug up again and planted somewhere else to give someone else a carbon offset. You know, that kind of scenario could easily be looking at. So you really, you do need to do your homework properly.
I think You know, des despite everything, it, it is good to see us moving forward in some areas. I mean, obviously, potentially, you know, have we missed an opportunity with the pandemic and but yet there are, as you said, some, some good things. Where do you sort of feel on, on.
Moving forward over the next year or two, how can we, perhaps as a veterinary profession, make a real difference if you were in charge of the veterinary profession, where would be the areas that you would, you know, where are the easy wins on carbon and, on, on biodiversity, on waste. God, you sprung that one on me, Antony, that's a really big one. That's me right at the end, isn't it?
I mean, I think, from my perspective, now, you know, not being in practise anymore, I, I, I said to you, I, I stopped practising in sort of 2015, and, and this wasn't even a discussion that was happening in the, in the profession. I remember having to sort of, you know, fight really hard just to get recycling bins in, in one of the practises I worked in and things like that. And no awareness at all over the footprint of anaesthetic gases or anything like that.
And just In the last few years, the, it, it's very easy to feel frustrated at a, you know, a global lack of progress. But even, you know, if we look at the, at the veterinary profession, it feels like things have come on absolutely leaps and bounds, thanks to people like Ellie West and Laura Hyam and, you know, the whole VET sustain team. And it really helped by the fact that Justine's got this sustainability as her focus as BBA president this year and things like that.
So, I don't know. I think there's A bit of an education gap mainly, partly sorry in . I'm still hearing, you know, from people saying, well, how do I get the rest of my team on board?
How do I get my boss on board with this, you know, generally there, there might be sort of one or two people within a practise, but it can feel like you're trying to, you know, push water up a hill if, if the rest of the team aren't on board and. That, and to a certain extent this is the same with my audience. I am talking, preaching to the choir, you know, talking within an eco echo chamber a lot of the time, and so the people who come to sustainability webinars within the profession and things are the, the people that are already on board.
It's thinking about how do we reach outside of that and how do we start to engage everybody and get everybody feeling like this is part of our collective mission and that this is, this is a really important and that as a profession we play a really. You know, important role in this, and that it doesn't have to be at the expense of, you know, a, a business model or whatever it might be. But it's, it is difficult because from the outside in and, you know, knowing friends that are still in practise, there's a lot going on in, in, you know, in practise at the moment, it's hard and.
I can totally empathise with a boss who's, you know, spinning all the plates and trying to make sure they've got enough staff on the ground and dealing with, you know, stroppy clients and all this sort of thing. And then you go, Oh, can we just try and be a bit more sustainable as well? It's a bit like, you know, when I'm talking to parents about things to do, they're just sometimes you feel like they're just gonna look at you like, what?
So yeah, I, I guess, . Positive stories about, you know, people who are already doing loads of great stuff and some of the co-benefits that come with that. I know, I, I'm sure I saw a a case study from Elliot Line saying, you know how much they'd saved in terms of anaesthetic gases and things like that and yeah, you know why this is important and.
The, the role that our profession plays, that was a completely eloquent garbled answer, but I still think there's probably quite a lot of people not joining the dots maybe. It was very good and maybe that's part of your role with, with the beautiful book and the podcast that maybe that's your role to, to help join the people and join the dots together. Yeah, and I think, you know, maybe historically their, you know, climate science hasn't been communicated brilliantly because that's not a climate scientist's job, their job is to, you know, find the data and share the data, and I think as people, we.
Relate to feelings, we relate to stories, you know, and yes, there's a certain number of facts that, you know, would be really helpful for us all to know, but, you know, when we go down the pub, we don't just wheel facts at each other, do we? We talk about stories and we, you know, so, so I think if we are talking about trying to have conversations about this, that it is talking about it on a very personal level, talking about. The things that you've done, the, the, the benefits that you've got, the joy it's given you.
I mean, I always give the example of, like, walking or cycling to school. You know, I get 20 minutes with my kid where he can't escape me and he has to talk to me. Do you know, like, and we get 40 minutes outside every day, and, you know, I get to walk the dog at the same time, and, you know, all those kind of benefits that, you know, for me, far outweigh just being able to jump in the car and, and kind of take him to school, but.
And, and it's that very visible thing as well that other people will see us walking and think, oh, she doesn't live too far from me, I might be able to walk as well and those sorts of things, but yeah, I think, you know, we just, we need to keep talking, you know, as, as a profession, as a society, we need to keep. Keep talking and really gently questioning and challenging, it doesn't have to be confrontational, you know, that's the quickest way to get people on the defensive and things but you know. Maybe approaching things from a genuinely sort of curious, let's see what we can do about this.
You talked about the, you know, the idea of the sort of moonshot. Well, let's think about what our practise could look like in 2030 if we absolutely went for this and just create that really positive vision of the future, cos I think we're all very used to the doom and gloom apocalyptic scenarios. But actually, let's think about what our, what our practise could look like when it's got solar panels and a heat pump and a lovely wildflower meadow outside.
And, you know, we've got all these different anaesthetic protocols and our clients just love us because we've done all this stuff and we've been able to engage them and bring them with us and paint a really positive picture, and then start moving towards it. Jen, that's brilliant, thank you so much. I know how busy you are, also with your podcast, which is doing so well, so thank you so much.
I really appreciate your time and thank you so much for having me. I'm really honest to be honest. Thank you.
