[00:00:12] Barry O'Kane: Welcome back to HappyPorch Radio, where we look at circularity through a technology lens. This is Season 10, where we're exploring where technology actually meets the messy reality of how people and organisations work.

My guest this episode is Elaine Brown, Chief Executive of the Edinburgh Remakery, which is a social enterprise and charity based in Leith in Edinburgh in Scotland.

They describe themselves as Scotland's leading social ITAD. ITAD, in case you aren't familiar, stands for “IT Asset Disposition” which involves taking the devices, laptops, phones, and so on that businesses no longer want, wiping them, refurbishing them, and then giving them a second life or recycling if there's no other options.

Now, I've been to the Remakery space, and it's two worlds under one roof, a wall of textiles and an event space on one side, and then a floor of tech being stripped and brought back to life on the other. The word Elaine leans on for all of that is “social.” The refurbished kit, as well as being circular, funds the charitable mission, the repair cafes, the community clubs, and the devices gifted to people locked out by digital poverty. They recently earned a King's Award for Enterprise for this model, and they were the only social enterprise in Scotland to be recognised.

In this conversation, we get into what a social ITAD actually is, why repair and reuse can tackle loneliness as much as landfill, and the hard economics of running a purpose-led organisation when funding falls off a cliff.

As always, the full show notes and links are at happyporchradio.com.

So here's Elaine.

[00:01:39] Elaine Brown: Hello, I'm Elaine Brown. I'm the Chief Executive of The Edinburgh Remakery, a fabulous award-winning social enterprise and charity based in Edinburgh in Leith. And we are steeped in everything around the circular economy, and we're Scotland's leading social ITAD, which hopefully will become clear as the podcast progresses.

[00:02:01] Barry O'Kane: Excellent, yes. And welcome to the HappyPorch Radio. Thanks for joining me.

So yes, I'd love to dig in much more into what you mean by social ITAD and learn a little bit more, and we can discuss some of the amazing work that The Remakery does. 

And just to preface that conversation, the reason for this podcast or the conversations that we have is all about the technology and the software and the digital tools that enable circularity.

And that's part of our conversation, I hope, but also so fundamental to all of that is the hardware and the incredible amount of that - of waste and other social and environmental challenges with the hardware that is produced in unbelievable quantities, and I'm sure everybody listening will know that and so on.

So I'm really interested in how important that is or how that fits into the role that you do at The Remakery. 

But let's start with the social part. What does that mean, and how does The Remakery fit into the social and the local community?

[00:02:47] Elaine Brown: So, while we're an environmental social enterprise, the “S” of the ESG is absolutely integral to everything that we do. So the social part, because we are part and parcel of the community, and that community is large. So when I talk about community, it can be the business community using our services. It can be community groups who are facing loneliness or digital poverty. It can be a community who wants to come into the repair cafe because they are suffering low income and need for their tech to be repaired. It can be the community who's creative and just loves to do things around repair and reuse.

So our community is broad, wide and really anyone who's interested in the circular economy and repair and reuse is welcome and part of our wonderful community really trying to make that behavioral change around repair and reuse.

[00:03:41] Barry O'Kane: And I visited the building that you have in Edinburgh, and it's exactly what you describe. It's amazing. Like, one half of this warehouse has got the ITAD part, the physical handling, and we can talk a little bit about what that looks and how hardware goes to various places and what happens to it.

And then the other half is full, as you said, of workshops and the creative stuff and the Repair Cafe and things like the business breakfast meetings. There's so much that goes on. 

Tell me a little bit about how that works. Is that something The Remakery provides a building and structure for?

How does that work in terms of organisation and the structure of The Remakery?

[00:04:11] Elaine Brown: Yeah, so the Edinburgh Remakery is bricks-and-mortar. It is a shop and it's very important to me that it is visible on the high street. The amount of times I've been told, "Oh, just go away into a wee warehouse on an industrial estate somewhere." No that's not what we're about.

We're about being visible, about being mainstream. And so you're right. When people walk in the door it can seem a weird combination of when they first see it, they'll see a sea of textiles in an event space, and then they'll look to the right and as you said, they'll see our amazing social ITAD that's just full of tech. So tech and textiles. How does that work? It's a perfect complement of everything around introducing people to repair and reuse. 

So our event space, as you were talking about, is really important to us. And in there is a combination of our social enterprise activity, so income generation activity around the circular economy, but also the charitable mission happens in there as well.

For instance, the community clubs that we run are part of our charity, so we rely on funding for that. And so community groups come in and they do workshops with us around repair and reuse. So it might be learning to sew, it might be learning to use a sewing machine. It might be coming in doing some book art with things that would've been destined for landfill. All part of tackling loneliness. And repair and reuse is very mindful and often when people are busy doing that, they start to open up and chat and we get to the heart of trying to make them feelless lonely, trying to make them feel welcome. And in doing an activity, sometimes that's easier than forcing them to have a conversation. The conversation flows as they're busy mending something. 

The activity in that event space is really important to us for the charitable mission. But in there, as you mentioned, we have business breakfasts, so again, that's an income generator. But really what that's about is like getting the sectors together.

I don't want to sit in a silo of “we're only speaking to social enterprises or charities. “We need to speak to everyone and get everybody moving forward. So in there we've got a mixture of public, private, and third sector organisations coming to learn something interesting from a guest speaker.

But then the power of networking. Isn't that amazing? Where just the conversation can start to flow about repair and reuse and then before you know it people are connected and they're doing amazing things. 

That event space is really important for us. We want that to be a welcoming, visually stunning site, which it is. And where magic happens both in the charity side of things and also in the income generation side of things. So that's very important to us. In there we have our repair cafes. So again very important in the mission of getting people to think differently about keeping things in use. Back in the day, everybody did it. It was “make do and mend.” Your grandparents did it. Whereas now repairing something is very difficult. And so what we want to do through our repair cafes, we do tech hardware repair and textile repair, is make it very visible, make it very accessible. 

]So we have a pay- what-you-can-model so that it's not a stigma, it's not for people who can't afford it, it's not for the great and good of the city who can afford to have repairs. It's for everybody, and there is no stigma. And it's just wonderful on a Friday when you come down. It's cross-generational. It's just amazing the amount of people that come in and how fantastic it is to see people having their cup of tea, having a cake, sitting watching something being repaired, getting involved themselves, and walking out the door having learnt a skill and keeping an item such as a coat or a bit of tech hardware in use, diverting it from landfill.

So that event space is really important to us to make it warm, welcoming and accessible to all because repair is for everybody.

[00:07:54] Barry O'Kane: And as somebody who thinks a lot about the circular economy, as I'm sure you do, for me, that's a really exciting example of trying to build all those things together. As you said, the people and the community, skills building, I'm sure the people learning and working on the repair, there's like an opportunity there.

And that's even separate from, as you said, the other half of the building where the ITAD work happens. So tell me a little bit about that.

[00:08:14] Elaine Brown: Yeah, so we are incredibly proud of this. As you alluded to at the beginning of your podcast e-waste, the waste that comes from your technology is the largest growing waste stream. We are digital by default now. We're not gonna stop that tide happening, but what we can do is get people to think a little bit more differently about their tech.

Because if they understood what was inside it and the finite precious metals, I think that they would very much value their items differently, and we do a lot around that education piece around that. So we are proud to be Scotland's leading social ITAD. So an ITAD is an “IT asset disposition service.” Another lovely short and snappy title. But basically it's tech disposal. So when businesses no longer want their tech, they're doing a refresh, or it's just not fit for what they want to use it anymore, it can be hugely costly for them, both in terms of environmental paperwork that they have to have and data wipe, et cetera. But by using us, all that is free. And so they're getting their environmental compliance, but they're getting the social because in donating their tech to us, it's a past life in their business, but it has a future journey, future life at The Remakery through creating green jobs.

We are refurbishing tech, teaching people and giving jobs for people to do that. And then that tech is then refurbished to be part of our social enterprise model to encourage people to buy second-hand. It's not second-best. It's the cool thing to do. That's the mission is that they're not pressing the buy new button.The cool thing to do is say, "Look at this refurbished kit that I have," and how proud they are of it. And then the profit that we make then we, as part of our charity mission, it's to help people who are facing digital poverty. So we donate tech to a whole host of people in our society who are facing that digital poverty. 800,000 people in Scotland are facing digital exclusion. 

So it's an amazing thing. And we've built up really strong partnerships with our businesses because it's not just a transaction. It's not just, "I'm getting rid of the tech. It's sorted. I don't have to think about it now." The businesses think about it because it's about repair and reuse.

We don't use the word “recycling” very often in The Remakery. We're all about repairing and reusing and giving that tech a life. And then we tell the stories, and we share those stories with businesses. And stories are important to businesses now because their clients are demanding that. Our clients want to see that businesses are being ethical and they're thinking about the planet, and they're thinking about their communities and staff who work in organisations. If they want to stay with a company that really has some social value at its heart. So those stories are wonderful. They are lifted, put into these companies' annual reports, and together we're telling the story of circular economy in action, doing great things for our planet, diverting things from landfill.

But my goodness, it's also doing amazing things for people. And that piece of tech is valued and the stories about people who just, you know, it transforms their life that they've got a piece of kit now that they can engage with friends, they can make sure that they're applying for jobs, they can go to college, all through the power of a piece of refurbished kit. 

So for us, we are just so proud of that. And we're very proud that, being a business for good that's tackling that has been recognised not once, but twice. So we won the Queen's Award for Enterprise for Sustainable Development in 2022 with the work, amazing work that we're doing around tackling e-waste. And then just this year, in April this year, we won the King's Award for Enterprise, and we were the only social enterprise in Scotland to achieve that. So we really do believe that tackling e-waste in a really ethical manner with the ESG at its heart is a no-brainer. It's, being a good business for good, it’s good for business, and we spread that far and wide.

So we believe that everybody that's donated their kit to us is part of that successful model. And just why wouldn't you do that? It's simple, straightforward and the good that we're doing to our planet is just immeasurable.

[00:12:22] Barry O'Kane: Thank you for sharing that so eloquently. First of all, congratulations on winning this year's award as well. I saw that post earlier, and it's pretty exciting and well deserved, I'm sure. And because there's so much there of what you've covered, like there's so much going on and at the core of it sounds like as well, is the people. Like there's a connection to the community and the charitable side and the event space, and also you explicitly mentioned green skills and jobs, and then the inclusion and digital poverty side of the mission as well. So there's so many things going on there and I'd love to come back to the stories and things in a minute as well.

But just from your own point of view, if you don't mind me just taking a step back, ‘cause obviously you've been involved with The Remakery for a while now, and so has this always been like a part of your own mission to make this happen? Is this where it's all been driven from?

What's the story behind it?

[00:13:06] Elaine Brown: I think it's really great that you mention this on a day that Scottish school children are receiving their exam results. Because I always tell people that you can't plan your career sometimes. It's a wiggly line, and it's about, going through one door changes everything.

I always say to people, don't think that you've got to map out your career, because I certainly didn't. I studied history at uni, never thinking that one day I would be doing e-waste and refurbishing tech as the least techy person, my children laugh when I talk about cybersecurity and tech, because they're in that world and they just think it's hilarious that I can talk about that. 

But I think it's just been a progression. I've just been in the right place at the right time. I started off in vocational education in a local authority. I'm really passionate about getting people skills to go into work. And then I worked with an environmental not-for-profit getting young people from uni interested in the environmental. And those two worlds just collided when The Remakery job came up. Those two passions of skills and environment, and the rest is history. 

And with The Remakery, it's certainly been the cliché, it's been a journey. But what an amazing ride we've had. And The Remakery isn't me, it's the team. And I have such an amazing group of people who every day come in and want to do good and to see good. And, in the third sector, we're not paid really well so you're not doing it for the money. To feel like you're making a difference, I think all my staff really feel that.

And a lot of them, school wasn't for them but they've got a skill, and they're seeing that skill recognised, and they're putting it into practice. And a lot of them are tech geeks. They absolutely love it. They love, from the e-waste operatives who are opening up tech and taking out bits and identifying what could be used for repair, right the way through to the hardware technicians who've got such amazing skills at bringing things back. 

And they all love tech, and they love the magic of bringing it back to life or segregating a part that's not gonna go to landfill, but it's gonna be used somewhere else. Again my journey has just been, you know, spotting and identifying opportunities and then being very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time, speaking to the right people, building those partnerships, 'cause we've not done it by ourself. We've done it because it's been a collaboration. So I couldn't have planned where I am today but my goodness, I'm glad I'm here.

[00:15:42] Barry O'Kane: And you mentioned the journey there and you also mentioned the sort of third sector or the social enterprise side of things, and how that does have a different financial incentive, is unfortunately the reality and from our own space, comparing that to a sort of business-focused, large-scale ITAD, for example. And I noticed that you very explicitly say social ITAD when you talk about The Remakery. 

So I'm interested a little bit in that journey, and especially for those maybe listening who are going through similar journeys or trying to get similar social circularity projects, to keep going and to be successful.

Can you share a little bit about that journey and there's always gonna be rough times and good times, but, how you maybe got through some of those challenging periods?

[00:16:18] Elaine Brown: Yeah. Obviously, COVID seems a long time ago now, but COVID was a blessing in a lot of ways in a business sense obviously. I joined The Remakery in December 2019, so I'd just joined, and then by February, March, we were in lockdown. But what it did was it accelerated decisions that I might have made around how we can increase trading, how we can fine-tune our model. It just accelerated it because we had to. We were seen as essential services. I just had to make choices very quickly. And it allowed me to test things 'cause there was funding available and things. So it allowed me to test loads of things because funding was in abundance. And then once we tested it and we knew we had a model, then when the funding all started to disappear, because we had real good trading ideas and we tested them and tried them, we became successful with trading. So that was really useful, having that time where funding was in abundance that allowed me to trial things. 

And then for me the power of it and I would recommend to people is - networking is key. You will never, as a social enterprise, do things by yourself. And if you try and work in a silo, I just, I don't think it'll work. So you've got to go out there and learn from people. You've got to go out there and see who can collaborate with you, who can share ideas and things like that. I say never underestimate a cup of tea and a scone with someone. And that's my favorite bit about my job. I'm always disappearing off somewhere to have a scone and a cup of tea with someone, and that's been really successful. 

So, I know that there's a lot of social enterprises out there that just say, "Oh, we're just so busy doing the do that we don't have time to do all that or whatever." My argument is you don't have time not to do that. That has been the key thing, and we've got some amazing collaborations. We're so fortunate. We're working with so many people. We've got one of our Tech donation boxes in the Scottish Parliament. We have got huge companies that partner with us. We've had 3M, the people that make Post-it Notes, come in and sent four consultants to spend a month with us at The Remakery.

Us, a wee social enterprise in Leith are attracting global people. We had the head of AI for 3M come and work with us. It's just mind-boggling. But it's about the power of sharing our story, being in the right rooms, talking endlessly about what we do, and getting people really enthused and wanting to be part of it.

I would say to other social enterprises you've got brilliant stories, but those stories are no use just sitting in your own head. You've got to get people really excited about what you do. And I think that's what we've done at The Remakery, is get people really just wanting to come along on the ride with us.

[00:19:02] Barry O'Kane: Yeah. I have to say, I do like it when I see one of The Remakery boxes somewhere around the city, it's cool.

[00:19:07] Elaine Brown: Take a picture. I'm always still, "Oh, There's one. There's one." It's really great. It's like I don't know if you've ever been at Newtonmore and they have the wildcats, you go around chasing and finding them. I'm like that with my Tech donation boxes. “Where are they now in the city?”

Yeah it's a really good feeling. And the Tech donation boxes have been great marketing for us. They are great for behavior change. But overwhelmingly they're a marketing tool that's just been hugely successful because we're everywhere.

[00:19:32] Barry O'Kane: Yeah, that's really interesting. Just to dig a little bit deeper even into the story like, what are the biggest challenges that The Remakery faces today and as of now?

[00:19:41] Elaine Brown: So it won't be any surprise to any charities or social enterprises listening, but hopefully if there's businesses listening, please listen to the challenge that we have, and you've got the solution to help us. Funding is a huge challenge. And whilst we're trading very successful, income generating, I've got a pipeline, and still funding is critical in that.

We don't make enough money to cover absolutely everything, and certainly not the charitable side of things. So funding is still crucial in my pipeline of cash flow. And over the last two years, funding has fallen off a cliff. So if we talk back to when I was saying with COVID, when there was just an abundance of funding and funders, didn't scrutinise and didn't get in your way.

They were just like, "Here's money. We trust you. Get on with it." It was brilliant. Brilliant. Now, you've got all funders asking for different things, funders who only want the new shiny things. So rather than a tried and tested model, you just want the money to continue to doing something really great because you know it works. Funders are not interested in that. They want you to do something new. We are now a victim of a lot of funds we can't go for because our turnover is over you know, what some funders will mark. But turnover does not mean profit. 

And this is the bit that's skewed. So the biggest challenge that The Remakery has had is when we've done our cash flow and we've seen our targets for funding just going down. We can't pivot quickly enough to get the income generation to cover that shortfall. And that has been a huge challenge because cash is king, and if your cash flow is telling you something's not looking great, that is a huge challenge. And even though you've got a successful model, you can find yourself in serious problems very quickly.

My appeal is even businesses now who had philanthropic arms and everything, because the economy is such that every sector is feeling the pinch. If a huge company who used to do philanthropic stuff is having to cut back, then it's like a domino effect. It comes down.

So you can imagine then how difficult it is in the third sector way down here if businesses way up here can't afford things. So everything from funding to philanthropic to sponsorship, all of that has taken a huge dive. And that is hugely problematic. Even if you have a successful model, your cash flow can take a serious dive and we've been there, and it's a horrible place to be.

[00:22:06] Barry O'Kane: Yeah, I can imagine. Is it a strength or weakness given that, that you do have many strings to your bow, if you like? You have the ITAD which as well as income generating has the stories that you touched on. You have the event space and the repair cafes and the social, purely social stuff.

What I'm wondering is if you find that you're spinning too many plates or if it's all of those things are important and aligning towards the mission?

[00:22:28] Elaine Brown: It's a good question. Yeah, plate spinning is definitely what it is. We've got rid of lots of things that were nice, but they were just creating too much work. So what we've got now is probably what's crucial, you know. So we've got to do certain things because that social side, that gifting, they're all really important because they bring the stories. Yes, it is about spinning plates and it brings advantages because we have got something that other organisations doing in ITAD don't have, so that sets us apart. That's our unique selling point. That's really interesting to people, equally then we've got the challenge that other people don't have. People are just doing it for profit and nothing else. They don't have all the other things that we've got to try and do as a charity. We've got OSCR breathing down our neck, making sure that we are absolutely doing things to charitable status and things that for-profit organisations don't have. So it's a double-edged sword. 

It brings our unique selling point, it brings the stories, and it brings people maybe coming to us because we do offer something different. But then we've got to spin so many more plates because we're not just thinking about profit, we're thinking about community benefit.

We're thinking about how we're looking after our staff. We're doing a lot because we're also a charity. So I don't know the answer. Some days it's great spinning those plates, other days it's not so great.

[00:23:53] Barry O'Kane: It's less good. Yeah, fair. Totally fair. So you mentioned being embedded in the community and as you said, somebody coming along and helping with things like isolation, helping with skills development and so on.

And that's something that I'm really intrigued by, and I think is a really important part of how I define the circular economy or circularity in that, something that is locally embedded. The Remakery's ambition is not to be a multinational ITAD with data centers everywhere, but its ambition is to have this massive impact in the community.

I'm paraphrasing, so let me know if I've got that wrong. But to me, that seems like so fundamental and the way you described it as a social ITAD that I think that feels like, I don't know if I'm trying to say if that's so important or so incredibly powerful but is that a way that so for example, as you've mentioned, this great team and volunteers, is that one of the solutions to overcoming some of these challenges that you mentioned?

[00:24:44] Elaine Brown: Firstly, although we're called Edinburgh Remakery we're really Scotland's Remakery because our social ITAD goes all across the UK. We've been down to London to collect tech and way beyond and all across Scotland. Because we will help communities through our digital tech gifting anywhere in Scotland.

So if there's people facing that digital isolation, it's not just in Edinburgh, and it's back to what I said before, our communities are so wide. But it's really important to us that we embed that community feel and especially, I suppose in Leith, it was really important to me that we've got a history in Leith, so we've got a very strong community base in Leith.

We celebrate being really integral to the community of Leith. And Leith for anyone that doesn't know, there's Edinburgh, but Leith's better. Leith's the area that you wanna come into when you come to Edinburgh. Forget Princes Street, especially now with the fire and things like that. Come down to Leith 'cause that's the place of Edinburgh, and it's a real community space and real steeped in history and a strong community. It's one of the most populated areas of Edinburgh. 

So we really love celebrating that. At the moment, for instance I don't know if you've seen it, but we had funding to do community clubs where people were coming in and designing what Leith meant to them, and did lots of artwork around repair and reuse. And then we've got an amazing mural now on the side of the wall of The Remakery as you come down that depicts what Leith means to the people of Leith. And it is fantastic, and it was born out of repair and reuse and using different materials that would've gone to the landfill to create the story.

The people of Leith love it, and I love when I look out the window and I see people taking pictures of it, standing. We had people signing who'd been involved in it and everything. And they might not know that is the circular economy. I don't care if they don't use that terminology. I don't even care if they don't use repair and reuse. But they have been involved in that, and it's created a shift, and it's created a pride. 

So I don't know if I'm answering your question, but communities are being involved. It's like our tech donation boxes. We've had them in libraries and schools. School kids getting so enthused about donating their old tech and then that circular message of your tech today, we are a partner with the Royal Mint and they take our old motherboards and extract the gold. You know, the school kids love the story of your old motherboard in your computer today could be a ring on David Beckham’s finger because it's been made into gold and kids are so excited and so enthused. 

Now, they might not know that as repair and reuse, but they'll never forget that, using their tech for good. Ideas into the community, I don't care how they come to me, whether it's because they're low income and they need to buy tech at an affordable price, or it's because they're really creative and want to do a piece of mural work, or if it's because they're so passionate about the environment. I don't care how they come to me because whatever way they come to me, they will learn something about circular economy and it will create a little bit of a behavioral shift. And it's the same with businesses. When they come to me, they might come to me for all different kinds of reasons, and it might not be environmental.

It might be purely because it's the bottom line that they're thinking about. But I don't care because together we're still telling that story and they're still doing the right thing. So community is very important. Whatever pinch point they come to us, they will be part of a circular economy story.

[00:28:08] Barry O'Kane: You mentioned twice in our conversation the word pride, and I think that's really interesting. And I could hear the energy and passion in your voice there when you're talking about moving from, “Oh, there's this waste problem” to “Oh, I've got this cool story about this thing”  which, as you said, that mind shift from there's “throw it away, it's waste,” or “it's not as good as…” or whatever, but that it's “this is a cool thing that I've done with what used to be a computer or my computers or whatever, my clothes, whatever, has got a story behind it.”

And that I think I personally also get excited about that idea because it doesn't matter about the terminology or how intellectual or academic they are about it. If you can experience that on a very physical and emotional level that's the whole point, isn't it? That's where the change will come.

[00:28:47] Elaine Brown: It really is. When people come away on my repair cafe and you know, their button's come off their top they don't need a new jacket, they just need the skills to put the button on, and we've lost those skills. And it's a great feeling when they've learnt how to do that and they're walking out the door. They will value that jacket much more than they would ever have valued a jacket that they just spent a little bit of money in certain shops and you don't feel that pride. It's the same when people come in and they suddenly know how to fix their computer, and they've learnt that skill, and they're walking out the door going, "Ah, I've learnt a skill, and I'm really proud that this thing's, you know, keeping going." The sense of pride you have in something when you've repaired it and looked after it, it's a buzz that you don't get when you just simply buy the “press new” button, “buy new” button. It's a fleeting buzz, but it's not the same as something that you have repaired and you've reused it. That's a different kind of buzz, and you will appreciate that item far more than just simply having bought it and don't really care about what happens to it afterwards.

And I see that every Friday at our repair cafes. People feel good about loving something so much that you're trying to keep it in use, and you've got the skills that you've been able to do that. That's a really great feeling. Money can't buy that really.

[00:30:01] Barry O'Kane: Absolutely not. And that's on top of, you said the stories like of supporting other communities and other people as well. That's amazing.

And just as we are unfortunately starting to run out of time, I'm interested in and I guess maybe you've answered this already, but interested in what are you most excited about?

Like we've talked about the past and the story of where we got to and the challenges and the current situation. 

[00:30:19] Elaine Brown: So I had talked to you earlier in the podcast about the challenges of funding taking a dip and having time to try and pivot quickly enough to income generate to cover that dip and cash flow being king.

And that's been a huge challenge for The Remakery. And I've had to try and find a way to navigate myself out of that. And I really do think that we've got a brilliant business value proposition. We've shown that. We've shown year on year turnovers increased, our collaborations increased.

So this is the new journey for The Remakery, our growth with purpose to really sort of elevate that. I don't want to, I think you said, I don't want to be worldwide. I just want to make sure that we are doing the very best that we can to be an example to others of how social ITAD can really make a difference to your communities, wherever they may be, and also to help create these green jobs, which I'm just really passionate about doing.

So I'm really excited about the next stage of The Remakery. It feels almost like a beginning. So that excites me. That's a nice place to be, and I can't wait to see what we do next 'cause I'm sure we're gonna do amazing things.

[00:31:32] Barry O'Kane: Amazing. That is a wonderful place to finish this conversation as well. And I'm really excited to see where that goes and to support and be involved and cheer from the sidelines and all those things. 

So just finally, for those who are listening who want to find out a bit more, more about The Remakery and more about what you just said in terms of the next stages and what the exciting opportunities to get involved, where should they go?

[00:31:49] Elaine Brown: So go onto our website edinburghremakery.org.uk. 

And for me, if there are businesses out there and you've got tech and you want your ESG to go, "Whoo!" Then why aren't you giving me a call? We can do amazing things in collaboration to help digital poverty, to create green jobs, to get your staff enthused in what you as a business do. So yeah, that to me, it's a no-brainer. You've got tech, we've got the skills. Let's work together.

[00:32:19] Barry O'Kane: Brilliant. Thank you so much. And as usual, we'll put all those links into the show notes in wherever you're listening to this podcast, and also on happyporchradio.com. 

But just as a reminder, that's edinburghremakery.org.uk 

Thank you so much. That was a really fun conversation.

Thanks for joining me.

[00:32:34] Elaine Brown: Thank you very much. Bye-bye. 

[00:32:37] Barry O'Kane: So that's it for this episode. Thank you again to Elaine for joining me, and for all the work she and the team are doing in Leith and across Scotland.

If you want more from HappyPorch Radio, join the mailing list at happyporchradio.com, and we'll keep you in the loop. 

Thanks for listening, and see you next time.