Barry O’Kane
Hello and welcome to this special episode of HappyPorch Radio where we're taking part in the Podcasthon, which is a global movement of podcasters in over 45 countries and over 1650 podcasts each dedicating one episode to a cause that we care about. And not surprisingly, we've chosen to talk about the circular economy, and in this case, the role of the circular economy in the third sector in Scotland.
Emily Swaddle
Yes, we got to speak to Michael Cook today from Circular Communities Scotland, who represent a thriving network of charities and social enterprises that support Scotland's circular economy. We had a great chat with Michael, and it was so encouraging to hear all the ways in which they support third sector organisations in Scotland with their circularity goals.
Barry O’Kane
Yes, I really enjoy learning more about Circular Communities Scotland, the organisation and what they do as a network organisation, but also to hear more about this 260 odd member organisations of Circular Communities Scotland who are on the ground doing exciting circular projects, or projects with some element of circularity. And the part that was really clear to me, and that I always get really excited about, is we talk about the overlap between the sort of material environmental impact of rethinking what we do with our products and our materials, but crucially, then the social and people impact. And I think that's highlighted beautifully in some of the examples that Michael gave.
Emily Swaddle
Yeah, I think for me, it was kind of a bit nourishing today to hear the vision that Michael was talking about for, like, the future. You know, what's going to happen in the next 20 years, and where are we going to get to, particularly in these times where I feel like I'm hearing a lot of more negative and more regressive news. It's so, I guess, heartwarming to hear. You know, there is a potential future where we see a Repair Cafe on every high street, and where we see reuse as a sort of community led practice. And that was really lovely to hear.
Barry O’Kane
And so without further ado, let's meet Michael.
Micheal Cook
Hello. I'm Michael Cook. I'm CEO of Circular Communities Scotland. We're a membership body, kind of does what it says on the tin, on our name. We're all about the circular economy. We're based in Scotland and cover the third sector, charities, social enterprises, working in the circular economy space in Scotland. Great to be with you today.
Barry O’Kane
Yes. Thank you. Really pleased to have you here. It's quite exciting for me, actually, because we've been doing this podcast for many years now, but I've always wanted to talk a little bit more about the work that you do and what's happening in Scotland specifically. So yeah, let's start off, tell us a little bit about, I guess, the history of Circular Communities Scotland, how it came about and turned into what it is today.
Micheal Cook
Okay, so we were actually founded just over 20 years ago. We celebrated a birthday last year, and we originally founded “Communities Recycling Network Scotland”. Back then it was our members were largely doing recycling, work, material recycling, but over the last 20 years, as that's become more delivered by local authorities and private sector bodies that have taken up contracts to do recycling, the third sector in Scotland has moved up the waste hierarchy, and we do more reuse and more prevention activities, things like sharing, libraries and repair projects. And we've changed our name a few years ago to reflect that, but basically, we've been entwined with the third sector, circular economy space, probably before it was even called that. Hence, the earlier name. But basically, our vision is to see a circular economy in Scotland with all the environmental, social and economic benefits that flow from that being seen by Scottish communities. So that's what we do. That's our vision. We're delighted to have a growing membership that we're working with to see that vision come about.
Barry O’Kane
I did see that it was 20 years last year, but I hadn't really sort of equated in my mind. You know, that's a long time period. And as you said, that's sort of before circular economy became the sort of label or the terminology for this. So that's really interesting. I guess the other area that's really, as I said earlier, that's really exciting for me is to talk about what's happening in the third sector, which I think is an absolutely crucial part of looking at circularity, circular systems in the whole so can you talk a little bit about your membership and why when I say it's important for circularity, if you can help flesh that out and make it a bit more real for us?
Micheal Cook
Yeah, sure. I mean, I think, picking up on your first point there that it used to be people thought the best thing they could do with recycle stuff, and now we have an awareness that actually, you recycle materials, but you reuse products, and it's much better for the environment if we can reuse, you know, if the laptop I'm talking to you on, if that breaks that we reuse it as laptop before we recycle the materials in it. So our membership, and I think this is part of the unique role of our sector within the wider circular economy, or indeed the wider economy. I think it does a few things. I think one, it demonstrates the social impact of the circular economy. The economy is good for planet, but it's also good for people. So that's about job creation, overcoming employment barriers, working with groups that are disadvantaged in some way, and the circular economy is fantastic for doing that, but it's also about trying new things, and almost like the laboratory for the circular economy, trying things. Some of them don't work, but some of them do. I mean, there was a point where someone tried the first Repair Cafe, someone tried the first Sharing Library, someone tried, you know, First Community fridge, for example, and all these models have gone on to be replicated and copied in a way that has much greater impact than that first attempt. And I think something about the not for profit motive means that it's all focused on maximising the social and environmental impact, and it means that there's maybe a bit more innovation that is possible to prove that something works. Not everything succeeds. Of course, there are failures with sometimes the bleeding edge as well as the leading edge, but it's fantastic, and I think our role in supporting our members is to see something great that's happening and to make sure that message gets out so that it can be copied and replicated and scaled.
Emily Swaddle
Having been in contact with communities in Scotland on this for such a long time, what have you seen that's shifted over the past couple of decades? Like, if I think back to 20 years ago, I can imagine quite a lot has changed, particularly in terms of people's awareness of these issues and also like willingness to make changes in their own lives. Is that something you've noticed?
Micheal Cook
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there's several little trends at once that build up maybe to a bigger overall trend. So I mean, one thing I will tell you is just a measure of something. But our membership has grown from about 115 organisations five years ago to 262, today. So more than doubled in five years. Now why is that? But I think there are various trends behind it. It's not one thing. I think one is that, you know, there's much more awareness about climate change in society at the moment. It's maybe a little bit contested most recently. But basically the story of the last five years has been a growing consensus, until maybe more recently, on climate change, a desire that people have to do something locally about it, and not just see it as a global problem out there, but actually something, what can we do about it? And the circular economy is one response. And so we have people that have joined us, who maybe were not environmental charities. They've existed for a while, but they've decided they want to do something in that space, and the circular economy has been the area they've chosen. So they've joined us. I think there's also a growing awareness that we need to move beyond recycling, and actually that's somewhere where I think we've got further to go. I mean, if you ask the average person on the street in Scotland, and I think elsewhere as well, you know what's the best thing you can do with your old clothes, computers, whatever, furniture? I think they might say, recycle it. And our view would be, well, that's better than landfill and incineration, but it's not as good as reusing it. It's not good as repairing it if it's broken for either people or planet. And so we've come some way on that, but there's, a need to go further. I think the sense that communities are more proactive and want to the environment and care for the environment is not just global warming, it's not just the ice caps, it's not just the rainforests, it is all those things, of course, but it is also my community, my street, my neighborhood, and the people I live with, and therefore starting by tackling it here and what you can do and in terms of a solution that is actually good for people as well as the environment. Creates jobs, overcomes loneliness, tackles mental health, it challenges, you know, all sorts of positive social benefits from the circular economy. I think that is being picked up as well.
Barry O’Kane
You also mentioned organisations who maybe aren't environmentally or don't have that focus. I always like to imagine or as a way to sort of describe or visualize what you're describing is a Venn diagram. So you've got the sort of environmental impact of circlularity, and then the social and people impact. And for me, there's also the sort of, I mean, depending on context, there's the kind of business sense, if you like. And so I'm thinking of some of your members who are using resale or reuse as a way to fund or provide materials for their services. So it feels like there's so many different parts to that. But my question that I'm leaning towards is, how much of the conversation or the way your members are viewing this whole system as a way of saying, well, we need to fight against something like solve a problem. It's overcome a challenge, versus, hey, there's a real opportunity in this space to do more than a positive impact, and really reach beyond that.
Michael Cook
I mean, I think it's both. And I think actually, you ask different organisations that are our members, and they might have a different perspective on this, and you know, so, for example, we've got members who are environmental charities, and they exist to be a local response to climate change. We have others that are homelessness charities or who are fundraising for particular cause or medical cause or something like that. So actually it really does depend in terms of the individual member would have a different perspective, but I think what I can say, sort of cutting across our membership, is that actually the social and environmental benefits of a circular economy are kind of two sides of the same coin. And dare I even go deeper than that and say, actually the problem is rooted in the same linear economy. So, you know, digging stuff out of the earth and making them into something that's used for a short period of time and then throwing it away is living beyond planetary boundaries and has negative consequences for climate and nature and habitats, and is therefore bad for planet. But actually that same system is potentially bad for people, both at the manufacturing side and at the end of life side. That over-consumption leaves people discarded as a wasted resource as well. And we have, you know, poverty discrepancies. We have unemployment, lots of things because of potentially over consumption. So tying that reverse net on its head and saying a more circular economy in Scotland, or just forget the word more a circular economy in Scotland, it would create jobs in Scotland. So "RReuse", the European network that we're a member of. They did some research a few years back that showed that for every one or six jobs in landfill and incineration that would support that 10,000 tons of waste being processed, you could have up to 36 jobs in recycling. But why stop there? You can have up to 296 jobs in reuse and repair, depending on the material stream, obviously more in some than others. So the thing about those jobs, if you think about an incineration job or a landfill job versus a repair and reuse job, those jobs are more skilled, higher up the waste hierarchy. They're more local, as in, they're more likely to be in the local high street that has suffered in the recent years. You know a Repair Cafe would be there. Manufacturing jobs are more likely to be abroad. So it again, keeps it in Scotland, and it's a totally false choice to choose between environment and people. You can't solve climate change without people. It's our collective behaviors that have caused it. So my lifestyle, your lifestyle, we need to be part of the solution, not the problem. That's the only way we're going to solve it. But the flip side is the planet is our home. So caring for people and not thinking about the environment is a very short term strategy as well. So I think, you know, having that more adult, nuanced conversation around a circular economy and showing more ambition in how we bring that about, one of the ways we can do that and create sort of a momentum is by demonstrating the social benefits here and now that we have and thinking, what would it be like to scale those?
Barry O’Kane
There's so many different directions. I wanted to take the conversation there, but let's come back to some of the examples you mentioned there. You gave a couple of quick examples, but is there some stories or some of your favorite case studies of Circular Communities Scotland members or types of organisations that you can share with us?
Micheal Cook
I will say go to our website, listeners, circularcommunities.scot, and look on the publication page, and we've got a couple of impact reports that are filled with case studies about how the circular economy is working in practice in Scotland. But what I'll do is I'll just give a few examples from that, and just my time in the sector. So let's say I need to do a job. I need to put a shelf up. So one approach to that is go and buy a drill, but the other approach is go to a tool library, a sharing library such as Edinburgh Tool Library in Edinburgh, Glasgow Tool Library in Glasgow, Inverness Tool Library in Inverness, seeing a theme in the naming here and borrow that drill, research has shown that the average household drill in my garage or your cupboard might be used about 13 minutes in its life, one three. Now that's quite a waste of a drill, right? And whereas if we share and borrow it, and some of the tools in our members have been loaned out, you know, 100 times in a year, for example, then as well as getting what I need, because I actually don't need a drill, I need a hole in the wall, as well as getting that, we're also going into a place where they might have some expertise on DIY. They might be able to help me if I'm lonely or new to the area. A lot of people are putting shelves up when they move to an area. There's some social benefits of connecting with my community, and potentially having that tool library in that area, it's actually going to give some resilience against climate change. And you know, if there's a flooding incident or a wind base, you know, things are destroyed by the wind or whatever, these events are becoming more likely, then having that resource as a community resource, local you can, you know, they can get sandbags and things like that in their supplies as well. It can just build resilience in that community. And it's a much longer term response. And they, you know, typically they start as a sharing library, but they start adding on extra services, like how to do DIY, how to reach groups. If you think about DIY, it's a typical image of a middle class man with a beard that does it. But what about women? What about marginalized communities? They have the same needs as well. So how to support them to be involved with the tool library? So there's lots of things that can turn out what is a really simple transaction, a drill 13 minutes. Let's make it more than that, and actually becomes something much more than that. Let's take bikes as another example. A lot of our members work with bikes, and one of our members is Bikes for Refugees, and they do what it says. They provide bikes to refugees. Now they're reusing bikes. And bikes are fantastic in so many ways, and the reused bike is even better than a new one, because, on the one hand, it is a method of transport, but it is also something that's good for your physical, mental health. It's also something that might help you keep down a job, get to an interview, keep the job when you're getting there. During COVID, lots of people wanted to use bikes instead of public transport, for example. And there were, you know, bikes been given to carers and people like that. But what starts off being a conversation about one material, one product, a bike, can quickly become a conversation about, again, networking within your community, how to stay fit and look after your mental health. And lots of other conversations can flow from that. Nothing exists in isolation and you know, for me, it's the human dimension of behavior change and circular living that we're having a conversation with people about, in this case, providing them with a bike, or, in another case, providing them with a drill. But what it quickly goes on to is thinking about how we're connected to each other, how we're rooted in our communities, and how actually, we can actually mitigate our impact on the planet through the choices that we make every day. And those are just two.
Emily Swaddle
Thank you for those examples, and thank you as well for like, holding the importance of having the social resilience and community resilience alongside these environmental solutions, because I think that you're right. You can't really look at one without the other. One of the things that I am kind of aware of having been in situations where I'm working in, you know, an organisation that's trying really hard to meet their vision and mission, and it's all quite time consuming, and sometimes, you know, difficult work. And also then there's networks to join and communities to be part of. And they all sound like such great opportunities, but the reality is that sometimes it just kind of adds to the workload of the actual individuals within the organization.
Yeah, I guess, what do you do in order to ensure that your members are not maybe feeling that burden and more feeling the benefits of being part of that community?
Micheal Cook
That's a really great question, and I've never been asked a question like that before, but I think it's rooted in the real world, because I think we've all been invited to events. We've all been invited to join things. We've all received newsletters, and they've got to be more useful. We need to do them because they're useful, not because of duty, if it's going to be sustainable in the long term. So I mean, I talked about how our membership had grown. I don't necessarily claim to have the final answer on this or be the perfect incarnation of this, but I think we're really clear about something at Circular Communities Scotland, which is that we exist to serve and support our members, not the other way around. So our members exist to serve their communities, to deliver a more circular economy, to overcome poverty or homelessness, and, you know, to get more bikes being reused or whatever materials they're working with. They don't exist to come to our events or read our newsletters or talk to me and make me feel good about myself, but as a network body representing those members, and we're member led, so we actually have a majority of our board is made up of our members, and that's written into our Constitution. That's really important, that we're member led, in effect, part of that is that we want to do things that add value to them. So, you know, we don't want them to come to an event to build up the numbers on our event. We see the responsibility on us in the events that we put on to really be putting on events that are going to be useful to them, and they're going to come to because they're going to be useful. And in that, it's recognising that, that the strength of a network is not just the center. It's actually about the connection. So sometimes with the experts on something, maybe the policy space or something like that, but other times the experts, I mean, if you want to know how to do logistics in a reuse environment, the experts are the people that are doing that and doing that really well. So sometimes the experts are membership. And so sometimes it's not taking the stage ourselves metaphorically, sometimes it's just giving a space for our members to be able to have a voice and to share. So there's very much a two way dialog, I think, between us. And actually our current strategy, which we're just about to publish for the next three years, it actually represents that in our two main priorities, one is building capacity in our membership, and the other is creating the policy opportunities in our representation work. So one is focusing on bringing good things to our members and helping them grow, but the other is focusing on policy makers and seeking to represent our membership, so we can't afford to lose sight of that we exist to serve and support our members, and that's a real cut touchstone in what we do.
Emily Swaddle
Can you say more about the capacity building for members and what that looks like, and actually also about the policy thing? Because they both sound really interesting.
Micheal Cook
Yeah. So this came out of quite a detailed strategic planning process, which involved interviews with our members, surveys of our members. You know, discussions at our conference, obviously our board and staff heavily involved. But I guess there's two situations we want to avoid in the future. One is that the private sector say, come along and say, right, we want to partner with the third sector, and our members aren't ready. And the other would be that our members get to a point where they're ready, they want to take it to the next level and scale up. But the policy landscape is really not enabling of that and then that just keeps them small. You know, we've got members of all sorts of sizes, but suffice to say that our vision, if we're going to achieve a circular economy, if that vision is going to be achieved in Scotland, and how are we going to hit net zero in 2045, without making massive strides towards the circular economy, then what we need is far more mainstream engagement with circular behaviors. So what I, you know, there's always a bell curve drawn in sort of talks like this, where you sort of talk about the really keen that are doing the right thing for the environment already, and the sort of last 10% even if it was illegal to do the wrong thing. You know, we still have fly tipping, we still have littering, even though it's illegal. Those still behaviors exist, but the mainstream middle need to change their behaviors from linear to circular. How's that going to happen? It's going to happen because it's more convenient. The benefits to people are more apparent. The benefits for community are more apparent. It's cost effective. You know, how are we going to get an economy that repairs a 15 pound kettle when I can buy a pet kettle for 15 pounds on the parts and labor to fix it are going to be more than 15 pounds. How can we change that? So it needs to be easier, convenient, cost effective, and so we're not there yet. So basically, our strategy is laser focused on two things. One, build the capacity in our membership, help them grow, help them scale. I talked about in the past, our membership had more than doubled. And I think our future strategy isn't so much to double our membership, but we would love to double our members. We'd like our members to grow in size, grow in turnover, grow in impact, grow in jobs, growing the tonnage of the material they're dealing with. And we want to work out what the barriers are to that growth, and help through the events that we run through, the work that we do targeting our membership is to seek to overcome those, those barriers. It might be marketing, it might be technology, it might be logistics, but you know, how can we respond to those things? Impact demonstrations, definitely another one. On the other hand, we've got a policy environment in Scotland. It's a bit fragmented post Brexit. It used to be Russell's and it used to be Holyrood, and it was very much seen as devolved. But it's definitely partly the UK now, but also, you know, largely Circular Economy policy areas are devolved to Holyrood, to Edinburgh. So how can we create the policy opportunities that are on the cards that will really create the opportunities for our sector? So there are things in the possible future, like extended producer responsibility or product stewardship that can be really good or really bad for our sector, depending on how it goes. You know, there have been examples around Europe where EPR has come in, and it's just meant all the organizations that were doing reuse are suddenly cut out, and actually the producers are just doing recycling. It's actually a step down on the waste hierarchy, and the step down in relation to social impact as well. And we really don't want either of those things to happen. We want to move up the waste hierarchy. Want to maximize social impact. So for us, that would be our voice into the EPR space to say it could really be a good thing, it could bring much needed investment into the sector. But for it to be a good thing, it needs to be socially driven as well as environmentally driven. And it needs to prioritise the waste hierarchy. Reuse it and repair over recycling. So that would be the kind of voice we would be seeking to have in policy space.
Barry O’Kane
Thank you. That's really amazing, and sort of demonstrates a little bit not just the breadth of the organisations that are members of Circular Communities Scotland, the work that your organisation is doing and even though you described that as two sort of focuses, there's quite a lot of moving parts there. So, and I'd like to just sort of spend a minute or two just going the level like that was, that's the vision and the how, or the other strategic layer. Can you give us a couple of examples of what that looks like? You know, you mentioned events. And I know there's a bunch of other programs and things, but maybe you can give some examples of what that looks like, you know, when the rubber hits the road, so to speak.
Micheal Cook
Yeah, sure. So, I mean, a lot of what we do is getting our members together, but it is more than that. We, you know, we've got policy and funding newsletter. I mean, I'll just give you an example of some of the events we run. We run a funding seminar. So that's what I would call speed dating for funders, we get maybe five or six funders into a room or onto an online seminar. They do a pitch about what their fund is, and our aim for that is that we want the members to know which funds are right for them, which funds are wrong for them, and have the best chance if they apply. So it's often that, it's often linking our membership with resources outside the membership and putting a particular Circular Economy spin on it. So we don't tend to run services or events that are just what a mainstream membership body might do, like there is a charity wide membership body in Scotland, a social enterprise wide charity, we're not going to replicate what they do. We're not going to run payroll services or HR services, for example, because they are the same across all charities. What we want to do is get into the unique space of the circular economy and what particular problems and challenges or policy opportunities or threats that that creates, that's our niche. So a couple of years ago, we identified that we thought a strategic area for the future was sharing and repairing or two areas, and we created what we call the Share and Repair Network. When that started, there were 22 active sharing libraries or repair projects in Scotland with Repair Cafes, and today there's 84 so that's over three years that that growth has happened. Perhaps even more importantly is the total membership of the share and repair network is 116 you do the math, but there's 40 something, 42 I think, projects that are looking to go live but aren't live yet. So what can we do to help and support them? There is no point reinventing the wheel. We're about sharing and repairing. So you know, we want in the first year of that project, we created a How to Guide, How to Start a Sharing Library, How to Start a Repair Project. But these are long documents, like 80 pages long. Includes template, you know, risk assessments and template, you know, terms and conditions, and you know all sorts of things. And it's really been about working with our more established members who have maybe solved some problems, maybe suffered from some sort of problems, and then found the solution. We don't want everyone to repeat that exact same journey and fall over at the same points and get themselves up if they can avoid those. So it's about creating a resource that people can use, and we tend to then improve it over time. If people come along and they're starting up and they think, well, actually, there's a better way to do it, well, if they tell us, we can update that resource. So it's really trying to provide a center of excellence or a key knowledge repository that people can copy from and learn from that. But it is also, you know, community visits. So you know, one member might visit another member and who's further ahead on the journey than them, see how they do do things when we can. We have a bias for hosting events at one of our members when the numbers work, because actually, then you're not just talking about it. You also can go do a tour and walk around and see the work that they do, and a picture paints 1000 words a visit paints 10,000 maybe. So it's all about, you know, maximising that learning and maximising those relationships, so that often, you know, we've sort of done our job. When people don't ring us anymore, they actually ring each other. But to get to that point takes a bit of time. And so you know, if you are starting a third sector based Circular Economy project, you know, join us. And it's not because we know everything, but it is we often know someone who does, and we can help with those connections. And we do know quite a bit as well. Yeah, that's really how it works in practice.
Barry O’Kane
That's wonderful, thank you. That really does, yeah, bring that to life and demonstrating the value of like you said, just with the numbers, with the Share and Repair Network, which is a wonderful group from the outside, and just to see what that looks like in terms of impact. So just changing tax slightly, one of the last areas I'd like to explore in this conversation is Scotland, and your feeling about where Scotland is with the circular economy, where the third sector in Scotland fits into the whole economy in terms of circularity. And if you have thoughts around that?
Good question, I think we have a supportive environment in Scotland in a couple of ways. I think there's a strong commitment to combat and climate change. Recently reiterated, I was privileged to be at the First Minister's speech on , each of his four priorities, one of which is combat and climate change. And I was at that one. I think he gets it. I think the Scottish Government gets it, and I think they're committed to it. And we get, you know, I think the other way we have really a supportive environment is around the idea of an active third sector and the idea of social enterprise, which is, you know, in effect, a business, but with social and environmental mission. And I think that is, you know, we've got a supportive environment for social enterprises in Scotland. I think if I was to be glass is half empty rather than half full. Assessment, I'd say the rhetoric is very strong, the action is less strong to really achieve a circular economy, we need to make mainstream behavior change. And, you know, I would point to something like the very public failure of delivering a deposit return scheme in Scotland a couple of years ago to say that actually, you know, honestly, wrote a piece shortly after that, an opinion piece in one of the papers here, that if I had to make a list of 100 things I wanted to do for a circular economy in Scotland, the deposit return scheme on drinks bottles would not be in the 50% most contentious, and yet we couldn't get that done. And it actually became a victim of various sort of inter party political and UK versus Scotland devolved sort of debate. So I think broadly speaking, the public is supportive of environmental sustainability. I don't think the idea of the circular economy is as well understood as it could be, but where there are interventions such as DRS or coffee cup charge or the, you know, repair vouchers or things like that we've seen elsewhere, that I think the public will probably be supportive of them, but finding a way to pay for them and finding a way to do it, in a way that doesn't fall foul of maybe a vested business interest or a party political angle. You know, I don't, I think we can't really afford the planet can't really afford climate change to be a left right thing. It can't. And sadly, I think that is real at risk at the moment, seeing as what's happening over the Atlantic and things like that, it's everyone's home, and the science is pretty irrefutable. So we kind of need to get to beyond what we disagree on, maybe think about what we do agree on, and make sure that we are making changes with a pace and an ambition that is commensurate to the size of the crisis and the problem. And I do think the circular economy can help with that, because it is also so self evidently good for people. And, you know, we talk about a just transition and a just economy and things like that. I think green skills, you know, all these things, the circular economy and plays into those agendas. It can create employment here. But you know, the our current political system, I would say, is quite ill equipped to cope with, you know, a problem the scale of climate change or social care, for example, in another setting, they don't play well enough in a four or five year electoral cycle. You know, you need to have pain now so my grandchildren will benefit. And that's a long, long term view. And actually, you know, that's part of the problem. So I think we need to find ways of overcoming that, and and I do think community response is a part of that. So I think, you know, the government listening to local communities and supporting local community projects to grow and to scale up is a part of the solution, not by any means the only part. So I think there's good news and there's bad news. I think I think that would be the balance, but I think we can't afford to be complacent. We need to do more. We need to have more tangible ways that people can make more circular decisions, more convenient, more affordable, more attracted, and are sector will continue to play a part in that.
Emily Swaddle
It's such a shame when politics get in the way of good policy. It sounds like that's what you're alluding to with some issues that there have been in Scottish policy making on this and I'm sure policy making everywhere, really, but it's really encouraging to hear that you're offering a kind of support that doesn't rely on policy. I mean, obviously policy coming along and supporting these organisations to do what they need to do is really important, but whether it does or not, there's community support there as well.
Micheal Cook
Yeah, absolutely. I think the reason we're really focusing on policy as one of our two legs is to help members grow and scale up. You know, actually, if you give a charity a free material stream, you give them house clearances, you give them clothing, clothes back, Textile Collection or furniture they can make. You know, there are charity shops because you can actually make contributions to a charitable cause out of that business model. So of course, that's to be welcomed. And actually, you know, a lot of our members would be less dependent on grants than other third sectors areas, for sure, because there is a business model behind it. They are trading however, typically they can only do it with the materials or the products where it's profitable to do so. And if you look, just think about the real big macro picture that sometimes, if you can buy a kettle for 15 quid, if you can buy, you know, think fast fashion or something like that, one of those spaces where actually the cost that a product is retailed at is so low because typically poor working conditions or the planet are paying the price of that low product instead of the consumer. We need the cost to equal the price, so there is no hidden price to the planet or hidden price to the supply chain, and so sometimes our members can't compete with that linear sector in those product categories. Electrical repairs, for example, are really hard to do without, I would say, probably close to impossible to do without some sort of subsidy or some. Sort of support, typically, that can come through employability routes, for example, without creating jobs. You know, you can do it maybe with commercial where you get, you know, 100 laptops, or, you know, at scale, that's possibly more doable when the quality of materials is close to guaranteed and but you know what individual repairs is very hard to do. So that's why we would call for an intervention, like repair credits that they've done in Austria recently, where actually, you know, the government have, out of COVID Recovery funds actually subsidised the cost of repair. They're trying it in France, paid for out of EPR as well. So, you know, actually, anyone from the high street can go in with a product say, Please fix this. And they have a credit, in effect, the organization can call down and use to subsidize the repair because until the linear economy sort of catches up with pricing in those negatives, I would call them that, it's very hard to compete.
Barry O’Kane
Thank you. Yes, so much covered there and I'm just looking at time, because there's a lot more that I'd love to explore, and the conversation is so important and so broad, but to sort of try and bring it back to a close for today's conversation, because maybe we can have another one in the future and explore some of those topics in further depth. At the start, you talked about the vision for circular community Scotland and you've touched on some of the role there. But as a final question for you, what would your ideal kind of stretching out across the next I don't know if you want to look at 20 years, but the next time period for circular community, Scotland, you know, what would be the vision, the perfect or the really positive future vision that you would paint there?
Micheal Cook
Let's take 20 years, because, as it happens, it's 2025 right? And 20 years is 2045 and Scotland has committed to be net zero by 2045. The first thing I would say is that we can't be net zero by 2045, in 20 years time, without a more circular economy, and have made massive strides toward it. Zero Waste Scotland did a research a few years back and said that 82% of our carbon footprint in Scotland, so that's the emissions here, but also overseas on our behalf, because they make something in the Far East or something for us as a carbon footprint for that lifestyle here, that 82% of that comes from, in effect, consumption, the stuff, the services that we buy. So how can we achieve net zero in Scotland or net zero globally without us offsetting that carbon footprint. So we need to be more circular. So how will we achieve that? Starting with that end in mind, quoting Stephen Covey Seven Habits. That's one of his habits. Start with the end in mind, we're going to be circular in 2045, we're going to achieve net zero. So for me, that means a repair project on every high street. It means a sharing library on every high street. It means a reuse shop within driving or public transport from where you are or to collect. Make the collections really easy. We would actually have curbside collection or household collections for a lot more goods and all that material, all of that product we would be trying to minimise the environmental damage ? stuck The waste hierarchy, and we're trying to maximise the social benefit of the work that needs to happen to keep that product in useful life. And that means just creating more skilled jobs at scale, more satisfying jobs and and if you think in that space, there's the consequences of that, there's logistics consequences of that, there's social consequences of that, where do these products, where do these enterprises base themselves? And so, for example, you know, how can AI play into that? I mean, it blows my head even to ask that question. But how can we, you know, make sure not just that we get more done, but we get the right things done in a way that protects jobs that are both satisfying and rewarding in that space. So that would be, you know, the kind of transitions that need to happen to build that capacity to compete. I think ultimately, there would be some sticks in that as well, probably where, you know, the bad behaviors, the linear behaviors that we see now that basically make something that's single use and disposable. You know, welcoming the single use vape ban that's about to come in the next step. Because, you know, vape should not be single use. It's a question whether there should be vapes at all. But if we're going to have vapes, they shouldn't be single use. They got batteries in. There's a fire risk. There's all sorts of problems associated with building that as a throwaway, disposable product. So it needs to be right from the very beginning of product design, product labeling, you know, repairability index, you know, telling people how they can get something fixed if it breaks. And the environmental consequences explained on the label, so that consumers can easily make the right choices, not just green washing, but actually making the best choice for themselves and for the planet, right through to the end of life, where there's, you know, it's so easy to sometimes you have to be so committed to reuse something, to give it away, whereas it's so easy just to throw it in the bin. We should be flipping that on its head. It should be so easy to do the right thing and harder to do the wrong thing, and having ways to deliver that change.
Barry O’Kane
Outstanding. Thank you so much. So where can our listeners go to find out more about circular greenish Scotland and your members?
Micheal Cook
Good question. I love that kind of question. Thank you. But our website is the obvious way, circularcommunities.scot, just our name, but shortening Scotland to the domain name. And if you go there and you there's a “find reuse near me” button at the top. And if you click on that, you get a map of Scotland with all our members. And I would just, I love it if some of your listeners, particularly if they are in, if they're not in Scotland, come and see what we do and reach out and see what you can be doing in your country. But if you are from Scotland, if you could connect with one of our members, maybe go and use their services. Maybe volunteer with them. Maybe just find out what they are and encourage them. Then you can do that through our members map, and you can slice and dice that by where you are, your post code, or by what material stream it is and what they're working with. So hopefully that will result in some good connections.
Barry O’Kane
Thank you so much. Thanks. As we said, we've touched on so much there. So really appreciate your time and insights and everything you've shared with us today. Thank you.
Micheal Cook
Thank you for this opportunity to share.
Emily Swaddle
Thank you Michael.