The Spaces That Shape Us
Join us as we explore the profound impact of physical spaces on individuals' lives. Through interviews and expert panels, we unveil the secrets of designing spaces that shape emotions, boost productivity, and enhance overall well-being. Discover the latest trends, innovative designs, and strategies for creating inspiring work environments that foster collaboration, engagement, and work-life balance.
The Spaces That Shape Us
The Circular Office: A Deep Dive into the Circular Economy and its Role in Workspace Design
How can we reimagine our office spaces to not only serve our needs but also tread lightly on our planet? In this episode of Spaces that Shape Us, we delve deep into the transformative world of sustainable office design, where every detail, from the floor to the furnishings, plays a pivotal role in carving out a sustainable future.
We're honored to host two pioneers who've etched significant footprints in this realm. Agustina Memoli, the dynamic Co-Founder of Uplyfted, a trailblazing flooring company, and Dr. Greg Lavery, the visionary Director of Rype Office, renowned for its innovative approach to office furniture. Together, they offer insights into the circular economy, an approach that's reshaping how we think about consumption, reuse, refurbishment, and remanufacturing in office design.
Have you ever questioned why many office essentials, especially flooring products, find their way to landfills prematurely? Agustina sheds light on the pressing challenges in the flooring industry, offering solutions that infuse durability with sustainability. Dr. Lavery, on the other hand, delves into the potential of reimagining office chairs, ensuring they serve both form and function for longer than we've traditionally expected.
But it's not just about products; it's about a paradigm shift. Across the globe, regulations are being instituted to promote sustainable practices in office design. Discover the influence of regulations such as France's mandate on second-life sourcing for government furniture and the UK's landfill tax, signaling a wave of eco-conscious change in our workspaces.
By viewing office elements not as short-lived items but as enduring assets, we open doors to a myriad of benefits – environmental, financial, and social. Ready to be a part of this transformative journey? Dive into this episode as we traverse the exciting intersections of design, sustainability, and the circular economy.
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If you're pondering how to optimize your team's performance and workspace, reach out to one of our workplace strategists at AW Spaces.
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Welcome back to the Spaces that Shape Us. If you're joining us for the first time, a big, warm welcome to you. On this show we delve into the fascinating world of physical space and how it profoundly impacts our daily lives. My name's Holly. I'm the Brand and Marketing Director at AW Spaces. We're our design and build studio in London, specialising in crafting unique workspaces and educational environments. Today we're delving into a concept that's reshaping how we design, consume and think about sustainability the circular economy. With us are two wonderful guests and experts in this space. We're honoured to have Agostina Memoli with us.
Hollie Sanglier:Deeply embedded in the built environment sector, Agostina passionately advocates for a circular economy. She made it her mission to ensure that products, especially items like carpet tiles, find renewed purpose instead of ending up in landfills. With this vision, she co-founded Uplifted, an initiative with dual goals promoting sustainability and uplifting social housing residents. On the academic front, Agostina contributes as an assessor of two prestigious courses at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Her professional journey also took her to Interface, where she spearheaded the reuse and recycling of flooring. But Agostina's influence doesn't stop there. Her diverse experience encompasses roles in the steel industry, promoting gender diversity and even driving learning initiatives in UK based social enterprises.
Hollie Sanglier:It's a pleasure to welcome you to our show today. Thank you very much. On the other side, we're privileged to have Dr Greg Lavery with us as the mastermind behind Ripe Office. Greg Trampian's a circular economy approach in the realm of office furniture. Additionally, his leadership at Nezo Interiors is setting gold standard for net zero carbon office designs. He's an engineer at heart, with a PhD in sustainable building design. Greg's vision has always been ahead of the curve. Further to his academic work, he transformed a budding start-up into Origin Solar, Australia's premier solar adventure. Greg's strategic insights have been the driving force behind sustainability endeavours at global powerhouses like Mazdar City, Interface, Shell and Climate Works Australia. Join me in welcoming Dr Greg Lavery.
Dr. Greg Lavery:Thank you, Ollie.
Hollie Sanglier:Good to have you here. Let's start at the beginning For our listeners. Can one of you define exactly what we mean by circular economy and design?
Dr. Greg Lavery:We look at the term circular economy as an umbrella term that refers to reuse, refurbishment, remanufacturing and recycling, so call it the four Rs if you like. Each one of those has a really different meaning and on the ground you can imagine, recycling is a very different process, of sort of breaking things down a molecular level and then building them back up again. Whereas reuse might be saying, okay, we've got an office full of furniture over here, we're moving to this new office, let's see how much of that is fit for purpose for the new office. And then refurbishment and remanufacturing is in between that right where you say, okay, we might have some pieces that we can redeploy in the new office, but they need to be resized because the discs are too big, they need to be repowder coated, they need to be re-upholstered because it's no longer fitting with the look and feel for the new space.
Dr. Greg Lavery:That's where remanufacturing really comes in and the key thing about remanufacturing that we really love and we think that's the future, by the way because remanufacturing brings an item back to as new condition at a cost saving and with local community benefits as well, because all that work is done locally, compared with recycling, which is touted by those really coming from the linear economy, which is all about make it, use it and then throw it away. People coming from that world say, oh, recycling is an easy answer. But the problem with recycling is to break something down to molecular level and then rebuild it. It takes almost as much emissions or energy and environmental footprint as it does if you are making that from virgin materials. So that's why we think in the world of the circular economy, remanufacturing is really your sweet spot, because you're not compromised on quality compared with new, you've got a cost saving and you've got an environmental benefit.
Agustina Memoli:Yeah, and traditionally people will be thinking about waste. So linear economy probably is more connected to waste, and circular economy is a way of how can we avoid waste. But it's not only avoiding harm. Circular economy can also be how actually can we create more value and better value? And I like thinking about circular economy also in terms of an upstream and a downstream place where you can think of designing products with the circular economy in mind. You can think of designing spaces, like you guys do, with the circular economy in mind, but you can also even think about do we really need a product to achieve something? Sometimes you can think of circular economy as a service. So it's actually historically we would think how can we avoid waste? Today is actually, how can we keep materials and products circulating in the economy, being used further and more, and then, in order to achieve that, sometimes then we boil down to the more traditional R words reuse, recycle, re-manufacture. So it's about keeping things, keeping on.
Hollie Sanglier:Yeah, wonderful, thank you so much. So, greg over to you. Be good to hear a bit more about ripe and your journey, sort of how it started, what you're up to now, tell us all about it, thank you.
Dr. Greg Lavery:So we stumbled about eight or nine years ago on the idea of the circular economy and we thought maybe there's something here, and so we set out a series of criteria for what makes a product re-manufacturable, as in. We believe in the full circularity, bringing things back to the top condition, and always have. So we looked across the industry sectors, especially related to construction and the built environment, which is my background, and we found that office furniture as well as office electronics, by the way, really lend themselves to proper re-manufacturing, because there's a ton of waste out there. I mean literally 300 tons per working day in the UK go straight off to landfill and then there's another 200 tons going to recycling. So that's 500 tons of furniture every working day.
Dr. Greg Lavery:So think of that in lorries, right, a big lorry, I mean, that's about that's 10, maybe semi trailer loads going, going to waste. Essentially, what a loss to the community. All of that work that went into that furniture, mostly overseas, leading to wealth dripping out of the country all of that is a complete waste. So how do we take that volume and then bring it back to ASNew and the rest? I mean? Eight years we've spent figuring out really clever technologies, processes and tools to bring an item back to ASNew. So we want to grant, for instance from Innovate UK that something as simple as how to take a scratch out of a plastic chair. It sounds really straight from.
Hollie Sanglier:How do you do that?
Dr. Greg Lavery:Well, that's a trade secret for us, but Innovate UK realized that no one had done any research on that, so they were happy to award us funding on the basis it was brand new and fresh and important to the circular economy. So we spent about six months figuring that out, and now we have about four different ways to take a scratch out of plastic, which means that if you've got a plastic canteen chair or a task chair with a plastic back on it and then that gets scratched, we can bring that back to ASNew, and so you're not having a compromise on the product with a, I suppose, a damaged looking chair for your new office. And that's been fun, right? I'm an engineer and I love fixing stuff, and so to be able to do that in my career has just been fantastic.
Hollie Sanglier:Fantastic, that's amazing, and so if you're reusing products, that's what you're really pushing for Does that affect the amount that you can sell the chairs that you can sell? I guess, for there's lots of people that would just think, well, we just want to sell more, we want to sell new.
Dr. Greg Lavery:Right, yeah, good question. And what you've touched on there is the key difference between the linear economy and the circular economy, where the linear economy and most companies selling furniture in the linear economy, their world. It really has one lever, so that's sell new and sell as much as you can and only sell each piece once. Right, and that's what Clark and Well Design Wix really all about is sort of convincing customers that, hey, there's a new color or a new doodad that makes this product, this used product, much more desirable than last used product, so that that then encourages designers to think well, I can't possibly use anything that's in the old office for the new office for our client, because that's not keeping up with the latest trends. So that's really negative, right, and let's call it fast fashion using the textile industry, but really applicable in furniture and interior design as well.
Dr. Greg Lavery:So how do you change that? Well, the way we make money is we sell the same piece of furniture multiple times, because, being a, we couldn't call ourselves a circular economy company if we didn't offer to take back that furniture at the end of each life, and that's exactly what we do. So our warehouse is full of furniture that's come back several times. In some instances, and because we're choosing items right from the start that can be remanufactured perfectly and we know how to do that very efficiently, our furniture goes round and round and round. So, as Agostina will say, it's almost a subscription model, right when hey, work with us and that furniture will have multiple lives and, of course, each life the footprint is lower and lower and lower, because it's had a really good quality powder coat on it. We've re-pulsed it and really good quality, and we know how to do that more and more efficiently.
Hollie Sanglier:Do you change the color?
Dr. Greg Lavery:Of course we can yeah, of course, right. Change the fabrics right. There's all sorts of great fabrics out there that are themselves made of recycled materials as well. So why not put some post-consumer waste fabric on a chair to make that look fabulous but also reduce the footprint even further? And what I suppose we're getting into is the relationship, as well, between carbon emissions and the circular economy, which is as simple as think of the energy and emissions that go into making a product. If you're only making that once, your footprint is, of course, going to be much higher than if we're taking that same product back and doing as little as we need to to get it back to its new condition but obviously checking for safety and all those sorts of things and then putting it out there, and the statistics are about an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Agustina Memoli:And thinking on climate. 55% of the problem is energy. Definitely, definitely, we need to change our energy system but 45% is how we produce and consume, so it boils down to products and therefore it boils down to circular economy. And this is the statistics from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation that obviously, greg and I have always been connected and admire. So definitely, to achieve our climate goals, we do need to look at the way we produce and consume, and circular economy invites us to do that.
Agustina Memoli:And also, on the point Greg, talking about the lever and how do you make, how the more linear companies in clerken will do money and we were saying before about upstream and downstream. You can think of circular economy in those two terms and the companies in clerken will have done incredible efforts and progress in making their products more sustainable upstream, but what it's still missing is making the products more sustainable downstream, which is probably where more circular economy sits, which is not only thinking about when you don't need a product anymore, but also is like how do you define your business model as well, so that that product, when it's not used after the first use, you can take it back again, which is exactly what RIPE has done and what I believe we have done as well, which is how can we think of a business model, not only a design, not only a product. How can we change the business model so that it makes sense, we make money, making very good for the environment and with incredible social impact as well?
Hollie Sanglier:Amazing. Well, I think it's a great time to hand over to you so you can introduce your business, thank you. So tell us about uplifted We've gone from furniture to floor. Tell us about the journey of your carpet tiles. Okay, cool. So uplifted.
Agustina Memoli:It's super exciting because we believe they were solving two problems at once. So carpet tiles is the core of our business. It's a product that is literally not a carpet from wall to wall it's just a tile and it's an amazing product. And the flooring industry actually is an incredibly sustainable industry. It has been achieving incredible innovation for the last two decades. But the problem is that these products are built to last and therefore it's actually not that easy to disassemble them, to recycle them. But they are built to last and they are guaranteed maybe for 15 years, but in average in the UK, and especially in London, they're used between three and five years. So you have this beautiful product with at least two thirds of life to give that ends up in landfill in the UK. Just to give us a sense, so this room is probably two by two, so here we have four meter squares. So there are eight million meter squares of carpet tiles ended up in landfill yearly in the UK.
Agustina Memoli:So one hand, you have this incredible, beautiful, very sustainable products with incredible design ended up in landfill. On the other hand and that's a problem that I've been obsessed to solve for a decade I used to work for one of the manufacturers of these products. But then, on the other hand, you have a huge social issue, which is that housing associations in this country, when they rent out a property, they do not offer floor coverings in the living areas. So families moved to a house with no flooring in the bedroom, no flooring in the lounge or in the stairs. You have children crawling in horrible floors, cold, and a number of challenges that comes to that that it would be fantastic to talk about. So then we thought, on one hand, we have these beautiful products going to landfill and on the other hand, you have these families actually really needing flooring.
Agustina Memoli:So those are the two problems that we're trying to solve, and the way we do it is we have partnered with one of the biggest manufacturers in the country. We actually just recently signed our sixth agreement. So we have partnered with Modulis, interface, milliken, iggy, marlinx and Tarket. We get those products back after the first use, in offices mainly and then we have a process where we clean them, we sort them, we grade them and only the best ones are offered to housing providers. So in that way we create incredible social impact for the families. We create incredible environmental impact. So in this case, the UK, avoiding that going to landfill but at the same time going back to business models. You know we've created business model that hopefully will give a lot of financial impact for ourselves by doing very good.
Hollie Sanglier:And how long do they stay in those, those housing projects?
Agustina Memoli:That's a very good question. So, as well as Greg, we believe that we need to take responsibility at the second use. So we guarantee the products to be down the floor for eight years. So we offer a guarantee for eight years and after those eight years we take them back and also we are we know that these products can last 20 years. They can last two decades easily. So they are very, very durable and they are very fit for purpose, actually for housing providers, because these are this is not a landlord of one property, these are organizations that own 75,000 properties that they need to manage and actually carpet ties are very because they are modular, they are easy to install, easy to uplift, easy to maintain and therefore they can last more than one tenancy. So it's actually very. It's a product that you know, one of the biggest innovations that we're doing is bringing something so different to housing providers, but we believe that the traditional carpet, the wall-to-wall carpet, is hopefully their days are counted. It makes a lot of sense to have carpetiles in housing.
Hollie Sanglier:Fantastic, what an amazing initiative.
Agustina Memoli:Such a good idea. Thank you, I just love it.
Hollie Sanglier:So all sounds wonderful. What are the challenges that businesses face, or what the kind of barriers when adopting a circular approach, and what would be your advice or your tips to overcome this?
Dr. Greg Lavery:What we do collectively both uplifted and ripe is essentially a new way of, or a new solution to, the market, right? So you've always had new product, you've always had second-hand product, but what we're doing is creating a high-quality, remanufactured or refurbished product. And that's new to many people. And the way that designers design is often about hey, I've seen the latest catalog and I'm going to pick 3,000 of those and 600 of those and whatever. And they're marketed to designers especially very heavily by the traditional incumbent providers, right, that's what Clark Well, for instance, is all about. So the problem for new solutions is they're often offered by small ear companies like ours who don't have enormous marketing budgets, right? So what you end up then is a design team sitting around a table going okay, let's get our design going for this office space or educational institution. How do we do that? Well, okay, we've got all the traditional catalogs on the wall there, right, We'll pick out of those and off we go. And, by the way, we just had a boozy lunch with one of the providers, and whatever that looks like.
Dr. Greg Lavery:Now the problem is those traditional linear economy suppliers don't want to change their model, right, Because they know how. They've always made money that got very heavily centralized production, often in Eastern Europe or Asia. They can't do a circular model right. It's just physically and economically impossible for them to lift up carpet, tile or furniture, send it back to Poland and bring it back again once it's been remanufactured. That just doesn't happen right. So for them, what they're trying to do is green wash very heavily, and so the poor designer is face this barrage of greenwash. So how do you get around that? Well, our advice is don't listen to the big guys and their greenwash. Try and find those genuine providers out there who may be a bit smaller but who offer something really novel. And the way that you can satisfy yourself that that's a good product is do a trial.
Dr. Greg Lavery:So we always say if you're thinking about the circular economy, first thing you do a trial. Whether it's fitting out a meeting room at a client site to make sure that everything works okay and all that furniture looks great, or, in your case, the flooring looks fabulous, Agustina, that that trial is really worth it, because what that does is dispels any concerns about quality and this whole sort of new idea of circular economy. What does it look like? People walk in and they go wow, that just looks like new furniture and we say, well, of course it does. Right, that's what we promised you at Wood. And then after that it's very easy to then think about much bigger projects because it's been, if you like, de-risked, just by seeing for yourself how good a quality that is. So number one tip do some sort of trial, and even if you say to us, hey, can you drop off a couple of chairs so we can see what they look like, Happy to do that. Right, it's all about touching and feeling it and getting comfortable with this new way of doing business.
Hollie Sanglier:And how do you spot greenwashing? So many people sort of have sustainable materials. You know we do this, we do that. I can't even really think. I feel like I see it everywhere ago. How do you know what's greenwashing, what's not?
Dr. Greg Lavery:Yeah. So for us, it's all about who takes responsibility. So if you're talking to a manufacturer of what, in our case, furniture who says, oh, it's recyclable or it's remanufacturable, the next question is well, will you do that for us at your cost? Not in a million years. Right Now, linear economy is not interested in taking product back, right, and if you've got a linear economy system, you don't have any warehouses locally to store stuff that comes out or locally work on it or whatever. And so the answer is no. And if you're hearing that, then the BS radar should go up right, because if it's possible to do, why are these manufacturers leaving it to the occupier, who, frankly, have a ton of stuff to worry about, including making sure that their business is running really well? How is it that you leave it to the occupier to actually figure out where to send something to recycle it and how to break it apart in the recycled components? That's just grossly irresponsible, right, but that's part of the greenwash that's out there, yeah.
Agustina Memoli:Yeah, and also wearing the hat that I used to be part of a big manufacturer of carpetiles and I was inside and in my job I was trying to solve this same problem that I now am trying to solve from outside. One of the challenges also is the value chain of the built environment, which is complex, right, and you need the right stakeholder at the right time, doing the right decision and communicating to the right stakeholder. So manufacturers sometimes they're not taking the responsibility and sometimes, even if they want to take the responsibility, it is very hard for the value chain to align so that products don't add them being wasted. And now I feel like I'm repeating like a broken record, but again, if we think of your question about around greenwash and how you catch that, so definitely, definitely, it's about responsibility.
Agustina Memoli:And again, linear companies tend to do very good upstream, right, if they have recycled content in the products, that's very good. If they use renewable energy in the factories, that's very good. I mean, they are doing good, but it's unfortunately not enough and I believe, having been inside a manufacturer, that I believe that the intention to do better is there. But then it brings us back to the definition of circular economy, which is actually quite systemic. A lot of things need to change so that the linear economy changes. So, obviously, what right office is doing and what uplifted is doing and what the manufacturers are doing, all of those things are necessary. But at the same time, the value chain and AW spaces, like you guys, have actually a big part in making sure that the greenwash is not as effective as possible, so interesting.
Hollie Sanglier:So how does the consumer or the end user kind of fit into all of this? I think at AW Spaces we do sometimes hear people saying, well, we can't afford it. It's difficult. It's a difficult conversation. We start to talk about sustainable suppliers. Is it going to be more expensive? It's going to come. They're fear that their budgets won't be met. What does it look like in terms of cost for the consumer or the end user?
Agustina Memoli:So it's slightly different in terms of how right office engages with the value chain and how we do so. I love you to answer that part, but in our case, what we really want end users to do is to know that they can ensure that their products, the carpetiles, when they don't need them anymore. They have a big part in ensuring that they don't go to landfill. So end users and AW Spaces and the value chain, other main contractors, other feedouts, architects, designers, strip organizations all of them have a lot to do so that the products don't end up in landfill. And it's actually quite easy In terms of how to do it. Literally, they contact us and we will make sure that the products are taken back and reused in social housing. And in terms of cost, it actually doesn't cost more. It costs comparative with landfill.
Agustina Memoli:So I've heard for a decade now that the challenge of take back and why take back doesn't happen often with us is a matter of cost, or not even with us why the industry doesn't have more take back of furniture or carpetiles. It's a matter of cost and actually having go into very, very detail and digging into these, I can assure you that it's cost comparative. But what we need to also ask is what are the practices that need to change? Sometimes what is costly is that we need to change and we need time to engage and educate the different members of the value change to do so. What I would say is that Greg is referring to a trial to start, and in terms of cost, what I would say is like let's just bust some myths and let's really look into the financials, let's compare really the numbers, Because circular economy has been around now for a while. There are so many options. It's the tyranny, actually, of habit what we need to change.
Dr. Greg Lavery:So from a furniture perspective the story is even better. So we've done about 300 and something projects and what we've consistently found, looking back over those, is a 15% to 20% saving on all furniture. And that's the mix of remanufacturing some existing furniture the client might have externally sourcing from the office clearance industry and remanufacturing, and occasionally we put some new in as well, just because there might be a wow factor piece that a designer is particularly keen on and it really makes the design. So of course we mix all those together. And then maybe some even slightly more expensive pieces that are made of post-consumer waste, like a plastic that was former yogurt pots that we put onto a boardroom table top for a really big visual effect. And when you wrap all of those up there's typically a 15% to 20% saving overall, based on our long-term average over the 300 or so projects. And like for like, we're selling furniture at 20% to 30% reduction compared with the new price. Literally same piece of furniture remanufactured 20% to 30% less and 80% lower footprint and some really good social and community benefits because of the work done locally to take that piece, move it, remanufacture it, move it back again. So there's what we call a triple bottom line benefit right, economic benefit, environmental benefit and social benefit.
Dr. Greg Lavery:Now, all of that's great, but back to your key question is well, how does the end user influence that? And I think Agostin have very rightly pointed to the large number of stakeholders in the built environment. So there's the designers, there's the contractors, there's the cost consultants, there's the project manager, and the client, or the end user, is just one of those many voices. What we find, though, is often the client is the one driving that decision to be more sustainable, and what they sometimes face is a barrage of negativity from all those other professionals saying oh look, you can't do that, or well, it's a risk, and gosh, we've never done that before, and so we'll have to charge you more money. And, frankly, that's not true anymore, right? Or that might have been true 20, 30 years ago. What's happening now is some of those intermediaries, or those agents involved in the procurement of a new space, are actually getting smarter, learning about the power of circular economy, and they can make more money from it. So what started the change is? The circular economy is being recognized as a way to meet the client's aims.
Dr. Greg Lavery:Often, the occupier just wants a lower carbon footprint. Right, they've got a net zero pathway that they have to hit because that's been a big commitment. They want an office that's beautiful, that demonstrates the values of the company around sustainability to staff, which helps of course with attraction, retention, productivity, all those sorts of stuff. The statistics are there to show that. So I suppose my one message for the end user or the occupier of the space is be brave, just say it and don't compromise.
Dr. Greg Lavery:So we've heard, for instance, there's a couple of projects that we've heard about recently where the occupier has been advised by the other design professionals that the most they could hope to reuse from their existing office furniture is 25%. And we said where do you get that from? Let us show you five projects where it was above 90% right, beautiful projects for some of the world's biggest companies who really embraced that amongst our 300 or 400 projects. And we can take you through it and you won't tell the difference because it's really quite extraordinary. And there's even projects we've done with 100% second life furniture and projects even with flooring where we've done 20, 30% second life flooring and you can't tell the difference compared with you. So those sorts of numbers exist.
Dr. Greg Lavery:So be brave, as an occupier saying I'm sorry, 25% is not good enough, right? What are we going to do with the rest of our chairs, tables, desks and all that? Are we going to send that to landfill? Not good enough? And so that then prompts the designers to say, oh gosh, well, we heard about second life and circular economy. Maybe we should be exploring it. And then they're earning their fees by going out, finding those solutions and presenting them back which, by the way, is why we love working with AW Spaces, because your designer totally across this. We get a phone call saying, hmm, we've got a client who wants to achieve this. They've got this furniture. What else can you provide? What does that look like? And we work together to come up with a beautiful design that meets the look and feel that was sought right from the start.
Agustina Memoli:And they have your furniture in the office? Of course they do. Yeah, you're hollying us sitting on our chairs.
Dr. Greg Lavery:Yeah, exactly that was part of your last refurb. So, yeah, really interesting. So I suppose the message there is be brave Don't put up with a second rate solution. Actually, push for a much higher percentage circular, because it's doable, right.
Agustina Memoli:And I think, if I may pick up the word compromise, greg, that you just said there's no need to compromise in quality, in design, in achieving the space that you want. If you want to, if you have a workplace strategy, you can achieve that. So you don't compromise in sustainability, in cost, in quality, in ambition, in look, and it'll be cheaper and you save carbon. So it seems hard for us to understand, I mean, what is not to like. And, by the way, of course, the manufacturers, the initial manufacturers of these products, again, have done amazing.
Agustina Memoli:And designers sometimes, when they bring the 25% answer, for instance, that Greg was referring to, a lot of the times it comes back to what we are used, to what we know. There is an element of learning and there's a gap of understanding and knowledge. It's not that people don't want to offer 95% of reusing the space of an office. Sometimes designers are faced with the limit of time. We all have eight hours a day. We all have studied in certain universities where we were given certain information. So the design practitioners also have the right to learn and actually relearn. But it's key that the end user pushes and the end user should not compromise, because everything actually can be achieved, and especially today, again 10 years ago. When did you start ripe?
Dr. Greg Lavery:Eight years ago.
Agustina Memoli:Eight years ago it was probably more difficult for end users, but today what ripe can offer and organizations like uplifted. So 8 million square meters of carpet is going to landfill yearly. That is not necessary anymore. We can operate at that scale. So actually the context has changed, but also huge changes are also coming from a regulation perspective.
Agustina Memoli:So we not only have net zero goals to achieve, but also it's very probable that in the UK in the next two, three years the built environment will be facing the extended productive responsibility type of legislation, epr, and it's already established in France and in other countries in Europe and it's probably going to start here with packaging in the UK. But I would not be surprised if in two or three years the built environment has EPR on its doorstep, meaning that the manufacturers of the furniture and the manufacturers of the carpetiles, in our cases, will have the responsibility that Greg was talking about before to actually make sure that the end of life of those products is not wasteful. So again they buy the designers and manufacturers and end users. And you guys, by operating with us, you're de-risking your future business because this regulation is going to be a huge change and we're not talking about 10 years from now, it's literally two or three years.
Hollie Sanglier:We can talk about 10 years from now.
Agustina Memoli:We can actually.
Hollie Sanglier:We're being deep, deep, dark trouble. Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Greg Lavery:Can I offer an example? So a different type of legislation that's emerging out of Europe thanks to the Green Deal and the circular economy action plan within that, which was all passed by the European Parliament back in 2020. The first really major outcome of that is that in 2021, the French government passed a new law that says that every single French government agencies, whether they're local, regional or national, must purchase at least 20% of their furniture. Second life Must. That's $100 million per annum market created overnight with the stroke of a pen, which is changing how France thinks about its circularity. So one good little bit of legislation like that creates massive repercussions. And that's just the government talking about its procurement. And then in the UK, government procurement is about 20% of the economy, right of all procurement. Right, it's massive. But the knock-on effect then, because that means that all those major contracts that the government let, that means all the major suppliers, all the designers, all the furniture dealers or everyone involved in that built environment value chain, have to change what they do. And if they start seeing good solutions and the government saying, well, hang on, actually 20% is the minimum, we're getting some really good cost savings, we're getting some really good social benefits and massive environmental savings. Let's push that. Why don't we go to 30, 40, 50, and eventually that'll get much higher, right? So that's a beautiful bit of legislation that really changes things. And I won't run down the UK legislation, because the UK was really one of the first to make a really good bit of policy around the landfill tax, for instance. So the UK government back what 10, 15 years ago said we're running out of landfill space, landfill's bad, let's tax it. And so what they said to the whole world, the whole of the UK economy is sure you can send stuff to landfill, but over time that will become more and more expensive. Do the landfill tax.
Dr. Greg Lavery:And that means, for instance, that if you have an office of furniture so you've moved into a new space, sadly often furnished with or with virgin materials we call it furniture from made from virgin materials instead of new and you've got three weeks left on your lease and you have to get out of the old space. Often the first thought is well, we just send it to landfill. But what's happening now is we're getting phone calls from people who are saying oh look, I have to get rid of the office full of furniture in three weeks. I've called up a company who's gonna send it to landfill and it's really, really expensive to do that. Hey, with you guys at right, would you just come and back your van up and take what you can right for free, because we have to get this out of the space.
Dr. Greg Lavery:So, actually, old furniture's a liability, so why not turn that on its head?
Dr. Greg Lavery:And if they, 12 months ago, when they'd started thinking about their new office space even if they didn't want to use any furniture again, if they'd called us up and said, hey, can you develop a transition plan for our furniture, for our old furniture, that re-homes it, that doesn't send it to landfill and extracts the maximum value for that, we would have been able to pay them some money for that furniture, right, because we would have had 12 months to pre-sell that into projects all around the UK that do want a circular economy in terms of their furniture.
Dr. Greg Lavery:So that's, I mean, one of your questions earlier, holly, was well, how does this change? Well, it's partly changed from an occupied perspective, from thinking okay, I've got this project for the new office down the road. Well, start talking early about what to do with the old stuff flooring in the case of uplifted, and obviously furniture in the case of ripe start talking to us really early and we can re-home that in a way that is much more, much more beneficial for the occupy themselves in terms of financial, but also environmentally and socially.
Agustina Memoli:And also occupiers and end users loved and I've seen it firsthand it how there's a reputation boost, right. It's a great story to tell and they feel proud that they were part of these. And it's not only the end user as the organization, it's also the person in that project that you're dealing with. We shouldn't underestimate how much that actually can lead to change Occupiers also, then. Therefore, I think that I feel like summarizing some things that we are saying, which is that you know they shouldn't compromise, they shouldn't think that it's more expensive. They should understand that it's not that they are not doing the right thing, but they are learning. They need to change practices, and that takes time, but that all today, 2023, in the UK, and especially in London, it's so much easier to do a circular space or a circular office than before, so they can reach out.
Hollie Sanglier:Wonderful. So we're coming towards the end nearly, but any kind of final thoughts on the future, whether that's innovations, technologies, future partnerships that you're hoping to put together. What does the future look like for both of your businesses and for the whole world?
Dr. Greg Lavery:Yeah, really good question.
Dr. Greg Lavery:So we're pretty excited about when you do some forecast calculations and we have to say, well, if we're going to take 90 to 90% of our carbon emissions out of what we do and how we live and work by 2050, and some companies have set much earlier targets than that, and hats off to them for doing that it leads to a radical rethink of how you fill an office with stuff, right, whether it's flooring or ceiling tiles or raised flooring panels or kitchen units or, in our case, furniture and lighting and things like that.
Dr. Greg Lavery:So if you, if you work back from that and you say, well, what do you have to do to get to a 90 to 95% reduction? Well, you almost need to have everything circular, I mean, of course, and let's, let's also break the office into operational emissions, so that's the emissions from the boiler system to keep the place warm, and the lighting and the energy to run the lifts, right, and renewable energy is a no brainer for that, followed by energy efficiency, right. So you do all that right and that going on all the time right now.
Agustina Memoli:And it's been going on for a while you know, built environments in the world have improved massively.
Dr. Greg Lavery:You've all speed drives on your family building management systems all that. There's a whole world of cool and it's great and services are, absolutely deal with that.
Dr. Greg Lavery:But when you're thinking about the not just the operational but the embodied emissions, so all of that energy and effort that's gone into building stuff and building, bring it around the world and then dragging it into an office that has to become circular because that's the only way you're going to get to 90 to 95% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. So it's going to happen. And if you've got a target to get there sooner than your competitors or sooner than the government targets, then you need to be jumping on the circular economy earlier and making that a part of your aims. And there's some companies we work with that say flat out right now we want 100% of our oil furniture to be remanufactured. And there's a couple. I mean there's one of the world's leading engineering consulting firms actually almost has an internal competition. So as they do another office right and we help them, we do an audit of their existing furniture and then, as stuff gets allocated into the project by the designers, we then that list gets smaller and smaller and smaller and they then have a committee meeting with all of their staff sitting around sorry, all of their project staff sitting around. Going right, we've got four items left. What are we going to do with these? Because we want to beat the other office that did their stuff last week, because they got 90 98% two months ago when they did their office. We want to get to 100%. How can we make sure we're seeing everything through to the best possibility? And that thinking is becomes fun, it becomes a competition. It stirs all that competitive spirit that you might have within an organization, but it also massively reduces carbon and costs. Right, so there's no downside and what we what? Where we see this going ultimately, is also really embracing the social aspect. So sustainability right now is mostly about the environment.
Dr. Greg Lavery:We love the social benefits as well, which aren't spoken about, but we tend to employ long term unemployed people with disabilities, especially from difficult places like the south of Wales where, due to the mining, the coal mining industry closure, there are a lot of third, fourth generation unemployed people, and when we build them into a project that they work with for three or four months, they pay, off course, real living wage.
Dr. Greg Lavery:They make a life changing amount of money. They can make really good decisions about the future. We don't get me wrong furniture might not be their thing, but if we've helped them to make smarter decisions and give them options about their future and give them a good resume, a couple of lines to say this person worked with us, they work really hard and we recommend them. That's, then, the start that they often need, and many of them have gone on to full time employment, and that's reducing the burden on society, on our health systems and a whole bunch of different things, but also it's really personally fulfilling to have touched someone's life and got them started on a much better trajectory than they are otherwise on, and all those stories, as you say, agostina, that's not spoken about often with clients, but when the project manager from a client gets to meet those staff, they're touched by that because they've realized they've really changed lives, and that's for us, as the next big horizon is that sort of social sustainability.
Hollie Sanglier:Wonderful. What about you, Agostina?
Agustina Memoli:I believe that we are going to see a huge change in the next five years. I believe that the scale and the speed of this is going to be immense and I totally believe that they're going to be first mover benefits here for end user, occupies and designers to take. If you ask me about technology, innovation, change, what's next? What comes to mind in scale? Definitely, social impact is inherently in what we do because we want to support housing providers and the residents in social housing. There's still a lot to do when it comes to the products and the business model and the value change. There's still a lot of that to do.
Agustina Memoli:But actually, again, what I tend to like to suggest to occupiers and designers is think about what can you do today from your role to change something in the project they are working now, because it can be. Look how much we feel to talking about circular economy and we can probably talk two hours more, but at the end of the day, everyone in the value chain, the built environment, can think what is it that I can do today in my role to be more circular? And I strongly recommend to do pilots. As Greg says, start small, don't worry about the scale, for now we will worry about the scale. We are building our businesses to scale and support your scale, but start with a pilot. Start trying. Seeing is believing and that changes minds and hearts much quicker than just the financial, telling you that our cost is absolutely no more expensive and it's comparable.
Hollie Sanglier:Fantastic. Well, thank you both so much for being here today. This has been so insightful. I've learned a huge amount. I'm sure everybody listening has learned a huge amount about circular economy. You can connect with both Agostina and Greg on LinkedIn. Their links will be in the show notes, as well as links to their websites as well. And listen to the next one. We will be chatting all about brand and how you can implement that into your space.
Agustina Memoli:Thank you so much, thank you.
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