Yorkshire Sustainability Festival Founder Kate Hutchinson talks about her pivot towards sustainability
Kate Hutchinson is usually the host of this podcast but with the recent success of the Yorkshire Sustainability Festival, it's the perfect time for her to sit in the guest's chair.
Producer Andy takes over interviewing duties and we hear about the key themes from the festival including what high profile keynote speakers Mary Portas and Kevin McCloud had to say. Kate also talks about her own pivot towards sustainability. She explains how sustainability found her - as her company produced more and more events linked to green issues and equality, her interest grew. Then, a chance mention of the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a conversation with a mentor led Kate to find out more, lean in to this roadmap to protect the planet... and the rest is history, including this podcast itself.
Kate launched Yorkshire Sustainability Week in 2023, then delivered an even bigger and better event - Yorkshire Sustainability Festival in the summer of 2024. In this episode she maps out her even grander plans for 2025 and beyond and talks inspirationally about how sustainability and business can work hand in hand to make the region, the country and the world... a better place.
Welcome to The 17. We are a podcast themed around sustainability and inspired by the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. And each of our episodes is either a deep dive into one of those SDGs, or we talk about a theme linked to sustainability. I'm not the usual presenter, my name's Andy, I'm usually the producer of this podcast, and our usual host, Kate Hutchinson, who is the founder of Yorkshire Sustainability Festival.
She is the guest today because That festival has just happened, a huge success, much bigger and better than last time round. And I think it's a really good time to tell Kate's story and to see what happened at the festival. gain the insights and just talk about where we currently are with sustainability and business.
So Kate, welcome to your own podcast.
Hello. Thank you so much. This is so weird for me, but in a really good way.
And you're on the different side. You're on the guest side now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So thanks
guys. Thanks for having me as a guest on my own podcast. It's really nice.
So let's talk about the festival first because you've recovered.
The dust has settled. It was a massive success. Well done. Congratulations. Thank
you.
What were the kind of themes, maybe two or three key themes and lessons that, you know, you were immersed in the festival, you went to a lot of the sessions, obviously you organised it all as well. What was coming through to you as kind of where we are at now?
Well, I would say some of the really key themes that we found within the festival, which were really interesting in a lot of the conversations, was how sustainability is now becoming at the heart of the discussion. The decisions being made in business and it isn't being seen as a silo or something that is separate to the decisions that are being made.
It is at the very heart of those decisions, which is exactly what it needs to be. One of the things that we have on every single one of our panels is a youth representative and those young people. We're talking a lot about the need to bring young people into the conversation, but also to create an environment.
space for young people. That was one of the really key themes that came through was this need for third spaces for young people.
What does that mean, a third space?
A third space is a place that is not your home, not your school, not your place of work that you can go and hang out. So it used to be like youth centres, but the Tories closed them all.
Or it used to be, you know, it's like the pub. And things like that. But these places have become quite unaffordable for a lot of young people. So the third space as a general rule has been lost. We've actually lost 80 percent of our youth services in the last 14 years. That's one of the things that young people were talking a lot about is this place where they can gather in order to be able to come together and actually create community.
And that is one of the key themes that I really love about sustainability is it's this rebuilding of the community. And it's. It feels to me, especially about like, it's like we're going home almost in that sense. So that was a lovely theme to come through. Another thing that was really interesting was around the skills piece and the need to create new jobs.
So if you look at the construction industry, we actually need one in every four students that are coming out of school to go into construction.
Wow. Which is nowhere near happening in order to
be able to build what we need to be able to build over the course of the next decade, 20 years plus, but there isn't the pathways.
That was one of the big things that came out was that there isn't these pathways. And if you listen to the last episode of the podcast, we actually talk a little bit about this with the guests that we had on then who were skills experts. Um, but that was something that was a really key theme throughout the festival as well.
That's interesting, isn't it? And obviously, young people are absolutely key to sustainability because, you know, it's, it's their planet, not necessarily ours, who are maybe a generation or two above. You had a couple of very high profile speakers. You had Kevin MacLeod and Mary Portas. Yeah. I think people would be interested to know if they weren't at the festival, what, what were the key things that they both said?
What were their kind of big messages?
So Mary opened day one of the festival and she was absolutely brilliant. And, and, uh, And she very much talked about how sustainability is a way of life. Now it is the new way that we are running business and it isn't just something that is second to the way in which business is being created.
It's at the center of that. That was her big key theme. And she, yeah, she was really, really interesting and really inspiring to listen to. Kevin is. The house geek that you think he is he is one of the loveliest men I've ever met in my entire life So he gave this phenomenal talk about the history of housing and very much, you know I just talked about that key team of it's like we're coming home He went through like the history of how housing had been built and the way in which housing had been built around Community in the past and how sustainable housing of the future is being built Essentially going back to that method, you know, and we sort of lost our way in the 1900s and the early 2000s and he talked all about that, which was really fascinating.
But then what he did was he stuck around and stayed with me for about two hours after the talk had happened, and I took him to see some sustainable housing projects in Leeds, and he was. Just fascinating to listen to. The marketing manager that was showing us around the housing block. Oh my gosh. He just quizzed her on every single possible technical question.
She handled it really well. She should be proud of herself. But he was the exact housing geek that he appears to be. And the loveliest, loveliest man ever. And I think it won't be long before he's back involved in what we do again, which was, you know, he was really complimentary about what we built. And, um, yeah.
Just lovely. But we also had John Richardson in the future noughts as well. Which was really, really brilliant. Very funny. Um, and they interviewed Eve Rudehouse, who's one of my favorite people in the entire world. She's currently the chief officer for economy and culture, um, at Leeds city council, but she's just about guest on this podcast guests on the podcast.
You can go back and listen to her episode. She's just about to move into local government. on a secondment and she didn't that wasn't announced at the conference so she didn't talk about that um but you'll be able to listen to the episode of john richardson in the future arts on their podcast in the coming weeks and months they are editing the footage as we speak so but yeah they were they were really really brilliant very funny and they even stuck around as well and like came for drinks at the people planet pint afterwards which was yeah it was really lovely
that's brilliant so going back to what kevin was saying it's interesting that he's Drawing this conclusion that we've got to go from Maybe back to a bit more local, I guess he's talking about kind of shared heat pumps and, you know, shared solar panels and bringing a house building a bit more smaller and community based and that's kind of what you've been doing here really in terms of your regional focus and and trying to make Sustainability more of a regional thing rather than just this big thing that we can't take bites out of So do you feel like your message is beginning to land as well?
Yeah, I think it's really interesting actually that you should ask that because one of the things that we announced at the conference was that this would be the last time that the conference was just focused on Yorkshire. Because a lot of the feedback that we've had in the run up to the conference and in the run up to building the whole festival is this need to start looking at the national picture.
But focusing it from the north rather than from this London centric viewpoint. So next year we will be running the conference as regeneration earth and it will be all the regions under one roof. So we'll still very much take that regional outlook and look at, you know, what it is that they're doing in Cambridgeshire, what it is that they're doing in Northumberland, what it is that they're doing, um, you know, in all these different places across the UK.
But under one roof so that all the regents can take inspiration from each other. And that is very much like, you know, the idea it's almost a bit like the devolution picture. If you look at what's happening with devolution, with all the regional mayors, how they're getting more power. We want to be able to utilize that methodology as it were and say, right, okay, how do we start?
for small businesses across the country to be able to transform their businesses and work with local and central government in order to, you know, drive forward the green economy. And then how do the big national companies fit into that picture as well?
So there's that kind of pathway, isn't there? And we always as we will with this podcast episode we end on that global National regional individual and it's kind of drawing that chain that link between them all isn't it?
Yeah. Okay, great We'll come back to that. What about the event itself? Obviously, it's I don't know how many times bigger it was this time round than last time round and you're already talking about how it's going to go from Yorkshire to now being this kind of, you know, all the regions together. What were the lessons from, you know, you were super ambitious with, with it this time round.
What are the lessons from running it and organizing it?
Yeah. So I think, you know, a lot of people who know me know this story that we've totally bootstrapped this and built it from, from what was supposed to be my house deposit and a bit of my parents pension. And it sort of, you know, it started there.
It's a real challenge to get an event like this off the ground. And we run it with a very, very, very small team. You know, if you compare it to some of our sort of national competitors, they have teams of anywhere between 10 and 20 people working on a project like this. Whereas we have. Three full time staff and four part time staff who built the event.
And I think that's one of our biggest challenges. So, you know, one of the things that we're doing over the course of the summer and building to the events that we're going to be running later in this year is going for investment, which will be really to help us kickstart the next part of our journey and to be able to actually help us to get it to the ambitions that I want to get it to.
So you're, you know, you're operating at the intersection of sustainability and business and all the things that you're saying is that. You know, it's a really encouraging scene here, but where do you think the overall picture is? Like you mentioned earlier that maybe now people are starting to think and like Mary Porter said, it's, it's just a natural part.
Sustainability is now a natural part of business. Whereas I remember even back to the first time you run Yorkshire sustainability week, it felt like we were still trying to tell people, look, you should be doing this. It feels like now that it's accepted. So now it's more about the how. Do you think that's a fair assessment of it?
Yeah. Like, even if you think about when I first launched, um, the idea of Yorkshire Sustainability Week, which was November, 2022, there was nothing like it. People really rallied behind the idea, but if I'd have launched that even a year before it would have fallen flat on his face. And I knew that it was right time, right place.
And all of those things, that's a part of the reason that we're, We're sort of evolving because people are saying to us, like, it's great that we've, you know, begun to understand the Yorkshire scene in sustainability, but actually we need to dig deeper into some of these topics now and we need to be able to sort of see a wider picture of what is happening.
Yeah, it definitely feels like we're moving at rapid pace. And I finally feel like we have a government that actually are going to. Put some ambition behind this as well. Like I was really pleased to see, you know, in Rachel Reeves, his first speech as chancellor, that she has immediately taken the ban on onshore wind, you know, and removed it absolutely great news.
And everybody in business knows this, this, this sort of. Wall of investment that we've been waiting for people to be able to, for investors to be willing to share essentially, and they haven't been doing it simply because the economy hasn't been stable and the government that we've had in charge hasn't been stable.
So it puts investors off putting their money at risk. Whereas now it finally feels, you know, it's only been a few days at the point of recording this podcast, but already my dad actually said to me this Everything feels a bit better already, doesn't it? Like it feels a bit nicer already, but that is very much how it feels.
And I can see business already beginning to turn in the right direction, which is great. That's positive,
isn't it? Yeah. And a lot of this is about momentum, right? You know, once certain things happen and I guess the change of government can be a big part of that, it creates a feeling that then creates more, more action.
Yeah.
Do you think, and this is a question that we've discussed on many of the episodes with lots of our different guests. So I'd be really interested to get your take on it. This. Question of business and sustainability, sometimes pulling in different directions, sometimes being not compatible to some people's perception.
They think, oh, well, you can't make money and be sustainable. What's your take on this?
I think neoliberalism is the issue. So capitalism is not going to end. We can get into whether or not that's good or bad probably in another episode because I could go on about it forever. But that, I don't think that's the direction of travel.
It certainly doesn't feel like it is, but I think the issue is this sort of idea of trickle down economics. So, you know, this idea that the, if you make some certain people in the country or the world super uber wealthy, See that that will then trickle down into everyone else. It's not true at all. And if you look at the course of the last 14 years, the gap between rich and poor has returned to Victorian levels in the last 14 years.
And that is an issue. That is a major issue because actually 99 percent of businesses in the UK are small businesses. So when you put money into small business, you know, you see these posters where it's like, you know, when you spend money in a small business, it helps, you know, so and so pay for her daughter's dance lessons.
That's true. That, that is true. So putting money into the hands of small business actually genuinely helps individual people thrive.
How does it help sustainability is the question.
So I would say that the, the way in which we live collectively isn't just about being sustainable in the sense of using less plastic or creating different energy, if you have more money in your pockets, you can make more informed decisions.
With the money that you have, right? When you empower an individual to have more money in their pockets, they can do things like buy electric cars. Which, if people start to buy electric cars en masse, electric cars become cheaper. So then it becomes easier for other people to buy electric cars. It becomes easier for people to get solar panels.
It becomes the norm. Because at the beginning of these things, these technologies are really expensive. But as they become more normalized, they become cheaper because the parts become cheaper, the mass production becomes cheaper, those businesses grow, that allows them to drop their costs and still make good profit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
It's moving the money through the economy in a different way, is the way I would say it helps sustainability. So it's a long term viewpoint, and this is one of the things that was talked a lot about with the conferences. One of the challenges that we have in business, in government, in individuals lives at the moment, is that we Think too short term.
So we need to have economic policies. We need to have sustainability policies that are for the long term, you know, that are 20 year plus.
It lasts longer than a government cycle. A thousand percent. And
this is one of the things that, you know, gets talked about, but you could say it for every single department in government, like the NHS should be removed from being a political football.
The education system should be removed from being a political football. Political football, the construction and housing needs should be removed from being a political football. It's one of those things where we need to start thinking at the overall picture. It's one of the things I really like about devolution and the whole mayoral model, although they are still, you know, in a political cycle, I think it's that attitude of place before politics.
I'm putting the place and what that place needs at the heart of the decisions that are being made. So, yeah, I think we're moving in the right direction now. It definitely feels positive.
I think when you look at small businesses, which, which you mentioned, and obviously, you know, we both run small businesses.
The tide is turning in terms of clients. People that want to come and work with you or work for you. They now want and expect sustainability to be part of what you're doing and for you to have policies and for you to be acting in the way you do your business in a sustainable way. If you talk about recruiting younger members of staff, they will make choices on who they work for based on those kinds of policies or whether the company in its actions are actually making sustainable choices.
So it feels like. We may be either approaching or getting to a tipping point in, in that regard too.
Yeah, one of my favorite memories which happened last year was, I went to a dinner and I was sat next to a guy who worked for a chemicals manufacturer and he said to me, we used to always get really great graduates coming through but young people won't work for us anymore because they think we're just a really toxic industry.
And I was like, Yeah,
well,
you know, why don't you just listen to the message that's coming through. And it was like, you know, our business is really suffering for it. Well, maybe you should think about what you're doing then, you know? And I think, I think it's really great. I love the Jonesy generation.
Nobody will get me to slag them off because I think they're absolutely brilliant. And I love how informed they are and I love how passionate they are. And I love that they will call you out when you are not doing the right thing. I think it's brilliant. And I, you know, as a millennial people pleaser, more credit to them.
And if these, if these bigger companies who maybe don't have the The sustainability policies that they should have start to lose out on the talent and they, you know, that's a lever for change, isn't it? So I think, you know, we go back to what you were talking about right at the beginning of the episode where young people actually have a vital part to play here because they can exercise their power in terms of who they choose to work for, where they choose to live, how they choose to be economically active, to really push this agenda forward, which is great.
Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. And obviously we have to acknowledge as well that the young people that are getting to make those informed decisions come from a place of privilege. But I think it starts there. And then if those young people make the right choices and use their privilege in the right way, then it helps those young people that are coming up the ranks who don't have the same privileges to be able to make those choices when that time comes to.
And if that's hand in hand with the kind of economic change that you're hoping for, then, you know, the future hopefully looks bright. Talking of changes and big decisions and progress, let's talk about this podcast. Because we started working together on this just over a year ago. And you, I could tell from the first time I spoke to you, you clearly had a passion for sustainability.
And. You were very anchored into these UN sustainable development goals. So where, where did that all come from? How did you hear about them? And why did they mean so much to you?
So this actually was really interesting because I'd been working on sustainability events for years before I set up Yorkshire's Sustainability Week.
And there's been a few moments in my Life where a certain person called Helen Alderman has sort of stepped in and said some really fortuitous things to me that has been really, really valuable to me personally and to my career. And this one conversation that we happened to have, I can't even remember where we had it or why we had it, what we were even talking about outside of it.
But Helen said to me, she was doing some work on sustainable investments. And she said, we, we anchor our sustainable investments in the UN sustainable development goals and trying to meet the UN sustainable development goals. And I was like. The
what?
What are they? And immediately I got off the, we were on Zoom, I know we were on Zoom, got off the call with her, Googled the UNSTGs and was like, the hell are these?
And how the hell have I not heard of them? And it was that sort of light bulb moment of, if I have been working in this industry, For at this point, like three or four years running sustainability events, and I haven't heard of the SDGs once, then that means that there are loads of people out there that, who are even in the world of sustainability and don't know about these goals.
And when I first read them, they felt like they were the answer. Like I read them and I thought, Oh my God, someone's actually written the rule, but we just got to follow it. Yeah. When you first start to move into this world, you can feel a bit hopeless and feel a bit like, Oh my God, the mountain's too big to climb.
We're never going to get there. We are destined to fail and everything's going to burn and fall to
shit. It's that climate anxiety.
Yeah, exactly that. Exactly that. Um, you know, you look around at the politicians and you think nobody's doing anything. And then I saw the SDGs and I was like, no, people are doing stuff.
People are doing stuff. We just have to listen and we just have to look in the right place. So for me, it was right. How do we draw more attention for ordinary people who are just like me, who are not. Sort of paying attention to every single thing that comes out, but want to know more. How do we help them to understand the SDGs?
And I think you created this format within the podcast, which we follow in every episode, which makes it really easy for us to break down how to think about an SDG and what that SDG looks like. And yeah, I love it. I feel like I'm learning loads every single time we do an episode. Same
here. I mean, this is one of the podcasts that I love making more than most because I'm learning every time.
And, you know, it feels like these are positive conversations that kind of everyone needs to be informed on really. And, you know, whether it's business or whether it's just in your normal day to day life, you know, understanding. What these 17 SDGs are. And, and yeah, like they're a bit of a roadmap, aren't they?
Really? I actually also like the fact that some of our guests have critiqued them a bit and said, look, they're not perfect. And these are where the limitations are, but just having those conversations have been, has been really, really useful. And yeah, it's been, you know, you look back over the episodes we've made and there's been a huge variety of discussion, which has been brilliant.
Let's go back a stage further. So, cause again, when I first. Met you, you talk very strongly about your pivot towards sustainability. Now, how and why did that happen? Cause you were on a slightly up, you know, maybe more of a conventional business path before then. Talk us through that.
I set up the secret event service.
That was the first business I set up when I was 25. I set up the secret event service with a vision to change the world through events. It was very lofty, very big, but I sort of, my parents, my dad's a head teacher. My mom's a teacher. They've both just recently retired, but that's a vocation. It's not a job.
So we grew up in a house where your job was a vocation and you wanted to change the world through it and you know, it was all very idealistic. And, and that was a real driver for me. The journey goes that we were 18 months old. I know we were slightly older, 22 months old. I worked out recently. We were 22 months old when the pandemic hit and our job became illegal overnight and stayed illegal and restricted for two years.
And that was really difficult for us because we lost all our clients overnight. But we were also two months short of being old enough to qualify for any government support. So we didn't have two years of books. So we were, we were in that sort of. I was in a similar position. Yeah. We adapted, we got into virtual event delivery and through the virtual event delivery we started running sustainability events, which was really interesting.
Is that just
by chance?
Yeah, completely fortuitous. So what happened was we learned in a virtual event platform. Won this one client and we ran this really great event called She Has No Limits with these wonderful women from Equal Talent. And it was all about sort of empowering women who had been, you know, left in this position during the pandemic where they were not only expected to be still doing their job, but also take on more of the burden of the childcare.
And, you know, so they'd created this really empowering event for women, which we ran in September of 2020. 2020, it would have been, and then out of that came the next gig. And then out of that came the next gig. And it was like a referral process. And we were just winning one piece of work after another.
And then we got referred into this client that ran big sustainability events. And they said to us, could you do, This thing in February called the Sustainability Leaders Forum at the time. And we said, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We'd love to. So we delivered that and then, and then we got the next project with them and we ended up working with them for four years.
And that was sort of the start of it, but it was all very technical. Those conferences. So a lot of it went over my head in terms of like, what, you know, what they were talking about. And then we were, we started working on different, other different projects with various different clients. And then we, we just so happened to like, keep getting projects that.
We're in the sustainability industry without sort of even realizing it. And then let's just crush the economy. We'd literally just delivered the biggest project that we delivered today, which was a big conference in London and New York hybrid conference. We had half the team in New York, half the team in London, streaming it into a virtual event platform as well.
The team that we delivered it for were absolutely thrilled with the outcomes, but rang me a month later to say, this The marketing budget has been slashed for the following year because of the economy crash. And so we're not going to be able to run the event again. And then five days later, I was at another sustainability conference and I had this like light bulb moment of, Oh my God, we could run New York show sustainability week and it could look like this.
And, you know, and this is what it, The format could be and I'd sat in the room and bought the domain there and then on my phone and it was so weird because so that's how it started and then I put it out on LinkedIn that evening to say I've had this good idea and I think, I think, well, I think it's a good idea.
I'd love to know what everybody else thinks. And that was that. Basically, and
you'd found your purpose. Yeah,
yeah, it felt it. And then it's sort of, it just all sort of kept spiraling in all honesty. And just, you know, one thing after the next, after the next, after the next seemed to lay itself out in front of me.
It was terrifying. The first year we ran it absolutely terrifying and so far, so good. It's, it's worked. And then once the week was over last year, you know, we had 1200 people attend 20 events across week one. And we decided to call it a festival. So that we could run it over a fortnight. That was basically why.
So that was how it then became Yorkshire Sustainability Festival. And now it takes its next sort of rebrand, as it were, the festival will contain you, Yorkshire Sustainability Festival will still happen. It's just the conference that will change. There'll be the fortnight of the festival, but the conference will be nationally focused.
So still based in Yorkshire, but with a much bigger kind of outlook.
Exactly that.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly that. And
where are you personally with sustainability? Because, you know, I've listened and edited you in many podcasts now, and I'll often hear you saying things like, you know, when we were talking to the guys from Oxfam, you were talking about how, you know, you totally changed the way you buy clothes and, you know, Use a lot of recycled clothes now and look for kind of the special one off items.
And how has it changed your life personally?
Yeah, I love vintage. I'm obsessed with vintage. It's really interesting actually, because I am not perfect and. No one is, and that's
a lesson you learn, to be honest with you.
Absolutely. But one of the things that it's really drawn attention to for me is things like my consumption.
So I don't, you're absolutely right, I don't buy clothes from any fast fashion brands at all now, but there is literally no need to when Vinted exists, right? I am changing my own habits and the way that I consume, I'm really conscious of how much meat I eat. And one of the things that we always do at all of our events is make our events vegan or vegetarians.
At the food vans that were serving food at the conference were all vegan or vegetarian. The secret business lunch was vegan or vegetarian. It's been really nice because I didn't know how to cook vegetarian food before. Like I, Thought that meat had to be the centerpiece of a meal.
Well, it's what you're brought up with, isn't it?
Yeah, a
thousand percent. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Whereas now I feel like I've learned how to cook and how to eat in a more sustainable fashion, which is really, really nice. I have no control over. My electricity and things like that, because I'm not a homeowner yet. When that time does eventually come, now we've got Labour government and everything's going to get sorted out.
Those will be the things that are top priority for me, you know, getting solar panels, I'll be using my energy, getting the zappy and all the rest of it. I'll be well into it all when I'm allowed.
Because there still is an issue, isn't there, that a lot of the sustainability tech, you know, even like an electric car.
or solar panels on your roof. It's a big investment. Yeah. People don't have that money to suddenly drop 35, 000 pounds on an electric car or even, even like the three, 400 quid a month it would be to get one on, on hire or lease. And then, Oh, solar panels. Yeah. Great idea. But you're going to have to invest 15, 000, 10, 000 pounds up front.
People don't have that money.
Yeah.
This is a big problem that still needs to be overcome. If
you are one of those lucky people that has that money. Please do make the move because it actually makes it cheaper for ordinary people to do it. So it is actually really important if you, if you are sat on that kind of money and you are thinking like, Oh, well, should we, shouldn't we know, please do, please do make that investment because it does actually make things easier for ordinary people in the long term too.
And what you were talking about earlier about small businesses being kind of the core of, well, the whole economy, really, you know, there are a lot of small businesses working in the sustainability sector that need more customers. To buy their products and their services. So it can grow and we can grow the whole thing.
Go back to the, the, the intersection with business, because there's, there's an opportunity here, isn't there? And I often think whilst, you know, making this podcast that there's kind of two ways of looking at it. If. If there is our entrepreneurs that are looking at going, well, look, there's an opportunity here.
I can make more money out of being sustainable. That's not a bad thing because as long as the output is that you're making contribution, there's no problem with you making some money out of it by coming up with a great idea.
Yeah, I, I was talking to somebody about this recently actually at the conference and saying, I don't care whether people are doing it out of any moral sort of obligation.
To change the world I'm doing out of that and I love that and that is, you know, why I care about it But it doesn't matter to me whether everybody cares in that way Whether you know some people like if you look at the hydrogen economy It's really interesting to look at the stats on the hydrogen economy in yorkshire so if you actually Were to invest in yorkshire's hydrogen economy at the same rate of investment that the rest of the uk gets you get a better return On investment than you would elsewhere in the uk I don't care whether or not the people that are funding hydrogen You Are doing it out of any great love as long as the funding happens, right?
Like that's the thing. So long as the change happens, it doesn't matter whether everybody's doing it out of any great moral purpose or whether they're doing it because they think they can make a quick book. Like as long as the change happens, that's what ultimately matters.
So you mentioned your six years of entrepreneurship.
I know some people do, but I'm not sure everyone listening and watching this podcast knows. How much you've put on the line here, I have, I have a little bit of an indication, but you're really going for it. So, you know, how do you reflect on where you are now on your entrepreneurial journey?
It's so lovely, actually, because I have learned so much.
Even in the last year, like every year, I feel like I have learned so much as an entrepreneur from the process and going through the process, which has been really valuable. And I feel like I get to be a better entrepreneur every single year, which is lovely. It's really hard. The pressure you put on yourself is insane.
It's really high pressure and you do put everything on the line, especially if you really want it to be the scale and size of things that I want to build. And that's, yeah, the pressure doesn't go away, but it becomes easier to deal with. It's how I would describe it. But yeah, I, I couldn't, I couldn't go back to employment.
So in all honesty, in those moments where I think, my God, I don't know how to get myself out of this one. I just think, when will I have to?
Bringing it back to sustainability in the 17, I mean, you kind of get that feeling in this sector as well thinking, well, there isn't an option, but to make this work,
you know, the whole,
there's no planet B thing.
This is why I don't want to be employed, right? Because if you like, for me, this is what the driver is. It's like, if I was employed, I would have to take somebody else's direction on how to make the difference that I want to make. And that's what the issue is, because I want to make a difference with the world, with the work that I do in the world.
And having the control over how I make that difference is what is really valuable. So like, jokes aside, that's what it actually comes down to. How do we stop the world from burning and everything, but how do we rebuild the world in the way that actually means that people get to benefit and live in just transition again, isn't it?
A thousand percent. Yeah. A thousand percent. It comes back down to how do people live in line with nature? How do we, how do we actually live as one, you know, as one planet, Rather than human separate to nature, separate to animals, separate to each other.
Okay. So we get to the last part of the podcast and you're in charge, which I think is going to be fun.
So we're going to do our usual thing of going through all the scales. You know, we've talked about how things are all connected at all the different scales. So we talk about global, then national. then regional and individual. So you're in charge. And I know usually we would be focused on one SDG here. We can be a bit more general, maybe sustainability as a whole.
What would you like to change globally
to actually
make progress?
So if I, if I could wave a magic wand and change something immediately globally, which obviously it would be, I'm going to go lofty because you know, I'm lofty. I would, I would, Look to, to go for a global ceasefire first and foremost. We have too many wars happening in too many countries, which ultimately fundamentally damages human beings, but also nature and our planet as a whole.
And we don't even understand the ecological impact of the bombs that are being set off in these places. That's without even getting into the human impact. You know, what is happening in these places. So if, if it was up to me, and I think if, if more women were in charge in the world, you would see way fewer wars.
So we've got, we've got world peace done, but it's a, but it's a fair point. You know, you can't be making actions towards sustainability when there is literally a war going on in that hierarchy of needs, it's going to take priority over everything else. And then all these important things. Fall down to the wayside.
Okay. So secondly, nationally, I mean, we know we've had the election. I'm going to just steer you away from politics for the time being because we, that's happened, that change has happened nationally. What would you like to happen?
Nationally, what I would like to see is this wall of investment that we know is there to start to come into businesses and then to see a redistribution of wealth across the country.
If we could see that, I think you would see a lot of changes. You'd see a lot of businesses, small businesses start to thrive, and then you would start to see individuals in community start to thrive. So redistributing that wealth and changing the way in which wealth is shared across this country is what I would aim for.
Okay, so. thinking economically and investment wise on a national scale. What about regionally? What about here in Yorkshire?
What I would love to see more of is collaboration in Yorkshire. So I think we're starting to scratch the surface of that with Yorkshire Sustainability Festival. And we're very lucky that we work with a lot of the combined authorities and councils across the region, as well as business, you know, national and small businesses.
But I think more collaboration. Would be really great to see. So how do we facilitate that? How do we create these environments where people speak to each other and know that they can go to X, Y, Z support to help their businesses grow here.
And then individually, we always end on that stop start. So if there's.
For people listening and watching, one thing that you could encourage them to stop doing, and one thing to start doing to help overall sustainability piece. Well, what would your stop and start be?
Okay, so I'll go for a really easy one for the stop, which is stop consuming so much. Start to think about where you're going to buy things from and, and how you're going to buy things more with intention.
You know, stop buying from fast fashion brands. Stop buying meat from Supermarkets and buy it from your local butcher, et cetera, et cetera. Get a milk round, actually start again on your street, that kind of thing. Because it helps the local economy as well, as much as anything. In terms of to start, I would say start asking for help.
I would never have got where I have got to this far, had I not asked for help from people who I have no right to be asking for help from, at all, whatsoever. And I say this all the time and my, you know, my black book is open to anyone and I will happily make introductions to anybody that I know that I think could be valuable.
Because, frankly, that's what, that's what makes the world go round. Connections, um, you know, there's that cheesy phrase which is like your network. You know, and all of that, but it's true. So how do we actually, you know, you talk about going back to that redistribution of wealth nationally. Well, one of the things that we can do as individuals is to start to spread our network and share our networks with each other, and that will help to redistribute wealth.
Brilliant. I mean, that's a great plan that you've come up with there. So, you know, let's, let's, let's try and make it happen. Kate, thank you very much. Thank you. And, you know, thanks for all the work that you're doing on York Sustainability Festival, the newer improved version that is to come, with all the regions involved and The Seventeen as well.
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