Episode 03: Show Notes

Monica Richter at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) talks to Nick Gonios about her role as Senior Manager of Low Carbon Futures, where she is optimistic we are on track to solving some of the world’s biggest problems. Her interest in the natural world began with her role as “chief weeder” of her father’s plant nursery as a child, and developed into a passion for systems thinking and the role of business in sustainability. In today’s episode, Monica discusses the initiatives which she has been involved in since she joined WWF Australia seven years ago, with specific emphasis on the Materials and Embodied Carbon Leaders’ Alliance (MECLA) which is the first of its kind. The construction industry consists of many wicked problems, including the fact that it is the world’s largest consumer of raw materials and produces 45% of global emissions. The goal of MECLA is to transform the sector to reach net-zero emissions, and in this episode, you’ll hear about some of the innovative approaches that they are utilizing to achieve this goal.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Important lessons Monica learned as “chief weeder” for her father’s nursery as a child.
• A rundown of Monica’s educational background.
• Monica’s two main areas of interest at WWF.
• The purpose of WWF’s MECLA initiative.
• Two versions of a circular economy that exist in the world right now.
• Examples of how the built environment industry is adopting low carbon approaches.
• Excitement that Monica feels about solving the world’s biggest problems.
• Wicked problems of the construction industry.
• Monica explains some of the ways MECLA is helping the build environment industry reduce the carbon and waste it is producing.
• Learnings from the FinTech sector that could be applicable to the construction industry.
• How Australia is pioneering change.
• Other organizations which are addressing issues in the built environment sector.  

Quotes:

“We’re diving deep into conversations about how we go about procuring low embodied materials, supporting industry to make that transition, setting those benchmarking targets, providing that common language to procure.” — @RichterMonica [0:08:08]

“If we can fly to the moon in ten years, which is what they did in the 1960’s, then I reckon we can do anything.” — @RichterMonica [0:13:12]

“If you make the incentives strong enough, business will meet that, they just have to have those incentives there.” — @RichterMonica [0:18:21]

“I actually have real faith that in this particular area [of meeting low carbon targets] we have a great opportunity to drive innovation and drive change globally.” — @RichterMonica [0:26:03]

“The climate crisis is real. We need to be getting on the journey. We have to halve emissions globally in the next decade.” — @RichterMonica [0:31:38]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Monica Richter on LinkedIn
WWF Australia
WWF
MECLA

Host Nick Gonios
Producer Jim Lounsbury

‍

Nick Gonios: 0:06Hi everyone, welcome to The Circulist Quest podcast. I'm Nick Gonios. And today I'm speaking with Monica Richter, Senior Manager of Low Carbon Futures at the World Wildlife Fund an organisation some people might not expect to be a leader in working with business sector to accelerate the shift to the circular economy. In this episode, we're going to learn about why Monica feels like this is an exciting time to be alive. And we'll learn a little bit more about what WWF and their involvement with the materials and embodied carbon leaders Alliance, listen, learn how Monica thinks Australia can emerge from the crisis as a renewable energy powerhouse, and a post COVID world including reimagining how we manufacture low and zero carbon products. Monica, I'd like to thank you for joining me on the circle is quest. So why don't you give us a bit of your background and what led you to your current role as senior manager of low carbon futures at WWF. But But before we get there, I'm going to say one thing I didn't get to watch a video of yourself from a few years ago, talking about when you're a young girl in your dad's nursery, and how that sort of spawned an interest in sort of nature, I would think and yeah, I'm probably going to take you all the way back there. But please tell us a bit about your background and where you're at.Monica Richter: 1:19

Yeah, great. Thanks, Nick. It's really nice to have a Come and have a chat with you and your listeners. So I grew up in Brisbane, my dad Yes, he runs a wholesale plant nursery, in Brisbane and I used to work there in the holidays, you know, I was the chief wieder. So I did a lot of work doing some good waiting. So you know, used to very hard work in hot conditions. And one's father is often one of the worst, you know, get on get out there do it. So I learned that hard work is very important. And it gets you somewhere, I became really interested in business and the role of business in really being a champion for change. I studied economics. At university, as you say it, I worked in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for nearly 10 years. But didn't you wanted to have other experiences and as of getting to other areas around sustainability. So I started doing a master's degree in social ecology at the University of Western Sydney. And it was a, you know, a really life changing experience for me to be thinking about issues in relation to social equity, environmental sustainability, and the role that business can play. This was in the mid to late 90s, when Corporate Social Responsibility became kind of it was a new issue. It was a really a new area of interest for businesses. You know, you might recall the triple bottom line being one of the key catch cries at that time. So I guess, you know, I stepped into the world of the not for profit, environment sector worked have worked in a number of organisations, over those years have always had an interest in sustainability, and systems thinking. I think that's one of the other gifts that I was given through my master's degree to think about any interventions that one has, through a systems lens, that there are many intervention points to solve some of these big problems. And yeah, have ended up working at WWF, not the World Wrestling Federation, but the World Wide Fund for Nature. I guess the rest is history. But it's probably worth stepping back to when I first started in this role. So I think that's nearly seven years ago. Now, there were two projects that I started to become interested in. One was, you know, asking the question of businesses, how come you're not procuring renewable electricity, to reduce your emissions? What are the barriers to you uptaking that renewable electricity and what can we do to help drive that change, you know, as we think about decarbonizing the economy, so that was one area of interest and the other was in 2015. So think about the lead up to the Paris agreement where governments were signing up to set you know, ambitious emission reduction targets. There was the launch of the science based targets initiative that was a partnership between four organisations including WWF, the World Resources Institute, which run the greenhouse gas protocol, which is very important for accounting year. It's a global standard for accounting emissions. CDP, formerly known as the carbon Disclosure Project, so they have been tracking a lot of company emission targets. They provide that information to companies like Bloomberg and a lot of financial institutions who use that to analyse how companies are performing against their targets, as well as Global Compact network. So those four organisations develop this initiative called the science Based targets initiative to help drive companies to reduce their emissions to the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 degrees or well below two degrees. A few things came out of that process for companies. One was that it was the first time companies are thinking about their carbon budgets and net zero emissions and thinking about setting targets for a medium to longer term, but in particular, that medium term target and the second was that they're thinking about the targets, and their emissions, not just within their own business, this scope one and scope two, their direct emissions that they have control of, but what about the value chain emissions, this scope three emissions, and that's where the birth of mechler started to plant its seed.

Nick Gonios: 5:47

Right. So that's been bubbling along for a few years for you. And it's like, we've got to get to a position of getting some tangibility to us with with some focus on the sounds of it. Tell us a bit about sort of mechler. And that's as good as it's, I mean, we've spent so much time talking about everything, but it'd be really interesting to understand sort of mechler. Yeah, what are some amazing backstories?

Monica Richter: 6:07

Right, of course, so some of the property companies that have set science based targets, and we're talking here about investor was the first property company to set a target dexus, and then phrases, so phrases, you know, they have residential, industrial, as well as commercial buildings, and they are looking to drive emissions. So when they hit their target, they started to have conversations with their supply chain, you know, can you provide us with low embodied carbon, concrete and steel, and they realise that actually, it was really, really difficult for them to source those emissions. So that sort of planted the seeds in my mind that really, we need to be helping companies at all levels of the supply chain to be reducing their emissions from the steel and concrete companies, but also through to the building and construction industry. And having those conversations and thinking about what the clear benefits of bringing together an alliance of organisations across that supply chain. That's where we ended up with doing our first reports last year. So you know, with an organisation called presyncope, some good friends, consultants, we launched this report to actually look at it from a systems point of view, what are those intervention points? And I think the industry was really, you know, you had companies like LendLease, saying, Well, we've got it, we've set an absolute emission reduction target, to be zero carb, not just net zero, but zero carbon by 2040. We don't know how we're going to get there, but we're going to be working with our supply chain to be doing that transurban. They've also set a very ambitious emission reduction targets and these engineering companies and the government, you know, the New South Wales Government have set a net zero target. So here we are on this journey together, where we're diving deep into conversations about how do we go about procuring low embodied materials, supporting industry to make that transition, setting those benchmarking targets, providing that common language to procure and then educating and building up that capacity that we can all support. So um, you know, that that's generally where we're up to now we're starting to do a deep dive into some of that detail.

Nick Gonios: 8:38

Right, right. Also about the US EU. So that's pretty exciting. But I look at it from a like with my circulus, head on, one of the challenges and I think we've shared with you in the past is the circular economy is such a big, you know, topic and word and but a couple of words stuck together relatively in the grand scheme of things, that means submit a lot of things, a lot of different people, that mean a lot of different things, a lot of different people. And I do believe with Mark circulus, head on, we actually are living in a world where we have two versions of circular economy right now. Right? One is, the first version being we're basically training and recognising and putting a label around circular economy, which is focusing on the symptoms of the linear economy, our current economy, how it works, and meaning, you know, recycling and waste and right to repair and all sort of, you know, extended product use are symptoms of the current operating model from a systemic point of view. And I'm very systems driven thinker as well and execute. And so I look at that, and I said to myself, that's great. We need to solve for that. But we also need to solve for what we're calling version two of the circular economy, which is actually a complete blueprint reset of the operating stack, right? And so we're in this sort of recognition that so we're actually in this recognition that we've got to do both. And I think it's one important point to share. I think it's important that we articulate which version of it that we're trying to do Then which version we can actually deal with later on. It's and it's all timing and ecosystem development and so forth. So when you're talking about these challenges with in with the Meckler sort of Alliance, how are these conversations sort of coming up? The reality is, you're there's some deeper conversations we are trying to solve for some of the really complex problems that exists out there. And from a systemic point of view, recognising Australia from an Australian context is a net importer of stuff, relatively, apart from the structural engineering side of things are building out our built world, there's all these sort of dilemmas that I try and deal with in my head, how do we how are we going to solve for these things, and those conversations coming up as part of this process, because I'm just intrigued, I've got heaps of questions for you. But I've learned so much time,

Monica Richter: 10:40

They are starting to come up. And we are definitely starting to see that the spark of innovation and interest and issues around reshoring onshoring reinsuring, our manufacturing is becoming more prominent. And as more and more companies think about what impact COVID-19 had on their supply chains, it's becoming more and more real, I think, you know, the jobs point of view is it just isn't one example. There is one manufacture aluminium manufacturer in Australia, that produces aluminium facades, right, and there is now a high demand for recycled aluminium products in the building and construction industry, we're just starting those conversations with the aluminium company to see if they can really expand and think about the operation to be able to provide recycled aluminium facades, you know, window frames, and all of these kinds of things to the huge demand that we're starting to see gain interest here in Australia. So better for us to be manufacturing it using recycled aluminium, you know, with a point of view of eventually moving towards powering that aluminium with renewable electricity than necessarily importing that aluminium or not having it available at all using virgin aluminium. So that's part of the conversation that we're starting to have, we have a working group that's looking at other materials. So you've got your mass timber as an alternative to steel and concrete, you've got some outstanding thinkers and people who are doing the research on reforming the materials, reusing some of the waste materials into building and construction materials. And we're looking at you know, we had a presentation at our recent mickler event from someone who has developed here in Australia, a carbon capture and usage process so that we can capture carbon from the atmosphere, you know, currently seen as a waste, put it into a brick, and it becomes something that can be used in the building and construction sector. So it has a couple of different benefits there. And we'll see more and more of those innovations coming down the pipeline. As you know, the things become more urgent and we unlock people's innovation because I totally if we can fly to the moon in 10 years, which is what they did in the 1960s then I reckon we can do anything. And that's part of the excitement that I feel at this point in time in my career, and in the you know, the state of the world that we have the potential to really solve the biggest problems that we have

Nick Gonios: 13:33

agree I mean, we've got so many different complex you know, wicked problems in the world right now. Right? And it's one of those is it's funny you say sort of moonshot because we sort of funny enough we use that as an analogy for what we're wanting to do and says arranging launching a range of different sort of moonshot like initiatives to try and solve some of these wicked problems which are long everlasting and they're gonna go they're going to get beyond my lifetime right? And I know that it's just the way it is but we're all like yourself we're all collectively on that mission to sort of do good in the world collectively for the many many more generations to come so and what we're calling them are greenshot missions funny enough so we want to go after and you know take from what happened back in shops and and creating a 21st century sustainable circular version called a green shop missions so we've got a couple of those that are coming working through right now one of those in the built world which is great and we'll be talking about that sometime soon. So but interesting when I when I look at now I've read through the report I did read through the voice quite extensive report was excellent and I read through quite a few other reports and what got pops into my mind is this whole you know, wicked problem of the construction industry heads, you know, and I'll give you I'm gonna give you some share with you some quotes and cycle them. And we'll sort of took a bit of it this next but if we look at the big wicked problem around the construction industry is that the engineering ekans these are quotes right from a couple of reports. The engineering and construction industry is the world's largest consumer of raw materials. It accounts for 50% of global steel production and consumes more than 3 billion tonnes of Romans ariels natural resources are currently being consumed at twice the rate, they are produced, or consumed at twice the rate they've been produced. And by 2050, this could be three times for me, that's just a wicked problem, right. And that's from the World Economic Report, which talks about shaping the future of construction back in 2016. Funny enough, then that error, one of their reports actually also speaks about how in the UK specifically, they can share 400 million tonnes of materials every year, making it the largest consumer of natural resources in the construction, this which is mind boggling just in the UK, yet, the waste management and disposal costs a huge swelling up to 30% of the construction firms pre tax profits, right. So looking at it from a financial point of view, the impact, and I've seen this firsthand, one of the executives that I know quite well, closest close to us, and a CEO of one of the largest development companies here in Australia. And he told me about a story around one of the precincts that build a multi billion dollar precinct in one of the cities in Australia. And it costs them 25 to $30 million, just to get rid of the waste that was produced by the depot, the builders and the subcontractors on site during the construction phase. And it just blew my mind that this was happening. I mean, not that I quickly, it's fair to say that I didn't disregard that it wasn't happening. But the level of it was what stir the pot with me. And I thought, there's got to be a way for us to rethink the system. So the other aspect of this is also we know in Australia that there are 90% of the existence sort of the built stock is about 90% in Australia, and 2% is new. So how do we deal with the existing not just the new construction that's going on? Right, we look at about we're looking at it from an impact perspective. And these are the conversations, you know, that are guaranteed or happening in the Alliance would be and with government and so all the different stakeholders? How do we deal with the existing not just new if new in Australia is only 2%? Right? So I'm very intrigued to understand sort of, what your thoughts on what's been discussed with mechler at the moment with regards to all those different things, and challenges that we are trying to deal with?

Monica Richter: 17:01

Well, I think the big end of town where there is the you know, finance available, I mean, they've they've crunched the numbers, and I think they're looking at re you know, repurposing buildings rather than knocking them down. So we've seen that as a trend over the last few years. And if you're familiar with the ANP, building down at Circular Quay, in Sydney, you can see that instead of knocking, the old building down the facades remains, they've doubled the floor space of that building by some very creative design and construction. So you know, that's all credit to the folks who've done that. at Aamp. It's a really interesting model for the kind of thinking for repurposing, and renovating and updating

Nick Gonios: 17:48

system and all of that.

Monica Richter: 17:50

Yeah, there's a whole class of buildings. So your, you know, your class BC and you know, that will need to be retrofitted. And we know, we want to be in a situation where we don't necessarily demolish it. So we have to provide incentives. And that I guess that's the role that that government policy can play, to provide the kinds of incentives so it's not just a time quality cost issue that there's carbon included in circular economy included, and that if you make the incentive strong enough, you know, business will meet that they just have to have those incentives there. And I think that's one of the great things about the mickler organisation, because we can collectively come up with some of those policy ideas, road, test them across the different parts of the supply chain, and then present that to government and say, these are our recommendations. This is how we think we can really reduce embodied carbon, reduce waste, and really create that circular economy.

Nick Gonios: 18:53

Yes, and I've noticed in the report, and sort of one of the one of the pillars is very much around sort of impact procurement, right, as an area and sort of design optimization, right? as sort of two pillars, I would say around sort of driving new capability and collaboration across the ecosystem,

Monica Richter: 19:09

because that's the role that architects can play in the design, the upfront design, you know, that's where the vast majority of the decisions are made. So educating architects and the design makers about how to optimise it for the lower embodied carbon reducing waste, I mean that that is really important. The next group of your government clients and non government clients, they're also going to be really important, but it is the design that you know, 60% or more the design, upfront design is responsible for the decisions that will take you know, 2050 years because a lot of infrastructure and buildings are up for a very, very long time. So the design professionals very important part to having the conversation going forward. And then impact procurement. Well, that's really Trying to aggregate demand as best as we can and be able to demonstrate, you know, whether it's through some kind of pledge, through policies through common language, about really being able to demonstrate that we want to procure these products, and that, you know, we've got targets and goals and so on. So you know, a lot of companies now have net zero targets, they are working through the processes to help them make that achievable. You know, some of them, some of them are very, very ambitious, and many of our members have a high level of appetite and ambition to drive that. And I think that's where that impact procurement model is going to happen. I've

Nick Gonios: 20:46

shared this in the past, but I've seen in the FinTech sector, and collaboration with government has been quite successful in terms of world class in terms of an approach to, they built an innovation sandbox asik built an innovation sandbox, where enables the young technology FinTech companies to validate and test new ideas in a protected IP environment, so to speak, but also a regulatory sort of perspective on it. So they could actually play with innovation on the edge, so to speak. And I gather, there are some learnings that we could probably take from that and apply that to the built into construction sector. Having said that, it's it's not bits, but it's atoms as well, right? Meaning it's real tangible products that take a while to produce and you know, re engineer and sort of prototype and so far, but it'd be interesting to see if there was a collaboration of some sort like that with with government that actually opened up things on the edge for innovation more from a, you know, not a process innovation, but for more from a convergent innovation opportunity, because that's where the real value comes when you drive conversion, innovation and transform ability of different things happening in a particular area or problem statement. So it'd be nice to see some of that happening locally here in New South Wales or even nationally.

Monica Richter: 21:58

So we had a presentation from the City of Sydney, they've been trialling some geopolymer concrete in some of the pathways. And that's, you know, that we need to have more demonstrations trials, we need to road test that the materials that are have lower embodied carbon equivalent in performance and longevity as the traditional materials that have been used, because that's really important, you know, you want from a safety point of view, you want to be able to make sure that there is an equivalence there, from a performance point of view. And sometimes these materials are also different for the people who are putting them in, you know, your cement applies there, they want to know, oh, look, there's bits of plastic in there where there wasn't previously, how do you know recycled plastic? How do we actually treat this, all of those kinds of demonstrations and trials are going to be really important to demonstrate and give to the engineers who are signing off on the contracts, you know, their reputation is at stake, to be able to have confidence that the materials that are developed, have that performance standard,

Nick Gonios: 23:14

let me ask your question, which is going to be quite interesting in terms of the Australian culture and context of the rest of the world. We seem to be known as being great followers of organisations and ecosystems, and enablers and importers of a lot of different things, even though we're seem to be great at doing a lot of different things at a high level where we're sort of great followers. I mean, I've spent the last 30 years in the technology sector and seeing the evolution of that sector has been a leading indicator for me to move and shift into sort of the circle list approach. Now in my third age, as I call it, what do you see? I mean, it's probably a tough question to answer but more answered, but just a conversation point around, how do we shift their mindset to being just go getters and making stuff happen and to be polite, but I was gonna say something else, but I was gonna say, how do we make stuff happen faster and better, in more innovative ways in Australia than waiting to see what Europe and North America even Asians doing?

Monica Richter: 24:10

So the great thing about the built environment sector is that we are already global leaders. That's something that I think, you know, the the sector does hide its light under a bushel, sometimes there are people within the built environment sector, companies, organisations that are the global leaders. So from the buildings and construction infrastructure point of view, we're already there. Now we are champions, and we're driving that shift at the global level and providing that policy leadership at the global level. So you know, we're Mikela it's a global First, let's let's, you've heard it here. It's, we don't have anything of this nature, around the rest of the world. So there are people who are deeply committed to the journey. I think the other elements to Australia is so we have ministers and governments that are driving the change. So you know, I want to put a big shout out to Matt Kane. And it's him and his leadership and the leadership of his team in the department that's just driving this agenda. And they're doing it from the point of view of not a lot of government hands on hand holding government intervention, they're trying to unlock the barriers and say, okay, what's needed to drive jobs, innovation, you know, let's infrastructure, let's actually get the smarts together and really drive it. And that's what I like that we need to have government industry doing what they do best innovators doing what they do best trust in a build that trust and then unlock the innovation potential is, stallions have a reputation for being great innovators. And sometimes, you know, we just need to get on with the job of addressing these issues. So I actually have real faith that in this particular area, we have a great opportunity to drive innovation and drive change globally.

Nick Gonios: 26:13

Mean, Matt cain is seriously just take my hat off to what he'd been doing around sort of market shaping. I mean, that's what a lot of people have been. I think one thing we've been heavily dependent on waiting for government to do stuff in Australia, but at the same time, it's a great sort of, it's great to see people like Matt actually market helping part of being part of a market shaping, right, and actually being part of the sort of that sort of leading light to actually try and make things and have the ability and confidence to do that, which is excellent. And it's interesting to it from our point of view, like one of the questions I'm sort of asking is, at the moment is... Can we really fix the climate crisis by decarbonizing buildings?

Monica Richter: 26:51

Built environment, responsible for 45% of global emissions. So that's the operational emissions as well as the embodied carbon in the materials. So it has a huge responsibility on our shoulders, huge responsibility to fix that, we have a lot of opportunity there to really drive that change. You've got countries in our region, in the Asia Pacific region, who, you know, if Indonesia and Thailand, for example, Malaysia, I mean, they're all going to be in the top 10, top 20 economies of the world, let alone You know, China, and so on and so forth, we have to be able to solve this to solve some of the big issues around you know, how they manage their cities going forward, and to make our cities more equitable. So I don't think we've got a choice, we have to address this crisis, every 10th of a degree is going to matter. And we have 10 years, literally, the science is saying we need to have emissions globally, in the next 10 years. So I say we get our green shot moonshot, goggles on. And you know, and we're ready for the big challenges and the big innovations coming forward. And I do I do have a lot of optimism that we can be a serious part of the challenges. And when you have people like Andrew Forrest, his boy election at the beginning of this year, for those of you who haven't seen his boy lecture, that's like a shot of inspiration into the arm or do that you should get him on your show as well. And he wants to biggest iron ore exporter in the world has done very, very well out of that. So thank you very much. And he's done a he did a trip in his plane all around the world in the last 12 months to look at what the biggest opportunities for him to intervene in the climate. So he's using his influence and he wants to build a clean green, hydrogen powered steel manufacturing plant, and plants all over the world. So you know, steel 7% of global emissions from steel manufacturing, India and China are the two biggest manufacturers so if we can clean up the steel, it's gonna take billions of dollars to do it. But if we can actually solve some of those problems, then we've got some ability to do that if we can think about materials that are instead of steel so you know that's some of those materials are starting to come down the pipeline, carbon

Nick Gonios: 29:41

CLT, or graphite wood wood. It's interesting, like it's, you know, it's the Atlassian tech precinct building that's being built are now sort of becoming a world class exemplar, hopefully when it's completed as probably the tallest glass and wood building and there's a lot of construction engineering challenges to actually get it to that point, which are currently being resolved theoretically right now through computational, so forth. But it's amazing to see ultimately that has been an exemplar of where we could get to in terms of decarbonisation, from my point of view as a beacon to the rest of the world on what could be done, how do you see the rest of the world of what's happening internationally compared to what we're doing here around this area?

Monica Richter: 30:23

So the C 40 cities, they have a clean construction declaration, they realise that they need to, you know, as cities of the world, the mayors of the world need to be driving, decarbonisation, you know, not just their electricity and operational, but the construction materials that are used. So there is that they've got a process in place, they've got about 40, mayor's engaged in this and about five cities that have signed up to very ambitious targets to reduce them, but in have embodied carbon by 2030, which is a big goal. That's called C 40. is at C 40. Cities. Yes, funded by Mayor Bloomberg and originally, but Celine ferons, who is running that programme. She's on leave this week. We've had a conversation, I want to get her to come and speak to our mclubbe group, because her stories are very inspiring one as well.

Nick Gonios: 31:23

Yes, yes. Yes. So look, commerce, Constantine, like, do you have any final words or comments that you'd like to share off the back of our great conversation just said,

Monica Richter: 31:31

Yeah, I guess there's a couple of messages to leave your audience with. One is, the climate crisis is real, you know, we need to be getting on the journey, we have to have emissions globally, in the next decade, we've seen the impacts of the changing climate extreme weather events in Europe, in North America, all over the world over the last, you know, the northern summer, we know the impacts that we've seen here in Australia. So that is getting real and very real. For us. Each decision that we make about our personal purchasing, and the purchasing for any company or organisation we're involved in, is going to make a difference. So we need to make those decisions count, particularly when they have long term consequences. And they're going to be around for a long time. So you know, each refrigerator, dry dryer equipment that one buys the material that buyers want, it's an important part of that process, get educated, you know what, none of us are going to be experts in this. That's why your podcast is really important. And the work we do, we're learning together, we're building that capacity. There's no fault here, this is about us learning together. And I really think that Together, we can make those shifts if you want to learn more about micklem be in touch with me, you can find me on LinkedIn, or mecla@wwf.org.au. And r ally keen to keep those c nversations going. We have a i novation sprint that we're a out to launch for the building a d materials sector includes d gital solutions as well. So t at's going to be announced p etty soon globally with HSBC, o e of our partners and you k ow, we're really looking f rward to being part of the s lution going forward. So t anks so much, Nick. Really a preciate having that c nversation with you.

Nick Gonios: 33:29

It's been exciting. It's been great. I really enjoyed you having on board silicon that night, I'd like to thank you for joining us here at circulus quest. It's been great learning more about you know what WWF in itself is sort of taking an active part in the acceleration towards a circular economy, especially here in the in the build worlds and construction space. And I'm seriously just looking forward to following more progress that's happening and MECLA and even collaborating in some way getting involved as well. As Monica has said, you know, you can find out more about MECLA at WWF. Which is at wwf.org.au. At The Circulist Quest we're always interested in stories about entrepreneurs, designers, engineers, and scientists who are helping to accelerate the shift to the circular economy. If you know of someone we just have to talk to, or have any questions about the technology we're developing to help product manufacturers close the loop, visit our website at circulist.org or write to us at media@circulus.org

‍