Season 3, Episode 101 : Dr Sri Ram and Smruti Sriram

00:02
Welcome to the green element podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. Smruti and Dr. Shree, it's great to chat with you and find out more about your organisation. Could you tell us a bit about who you are and what the organisation is about, please?

00:18
Oh, thanks, sir. We are a manufacturer. We are based in London, but our manufacturing base is in South India. We make eco packaging. And these are predominantly made from sustainable products, which are cotton canvas hessian. And the main objective is that we could change the way people use packaging. And one of the things that we introduced about 12 years ago, was the humble shopping bag. And as you might remember, the single-use plastic bag was just very common, you know, whether it was the Tescos of the world or the smaller retailers giving away plastic bags, and it was, it was being given away free of costs, and it was running in billions and billions and billions. These plastic bags had a tremendous environmental impact. And we now know what it has contributed to in terms of what's happened in the oceans, the rivers, and other places where it's deeply impacted marine life. So we were set about reducing plastic bags and then, fortunately, we had a bunch of very enlightened people at that time who set up the Court auld pact which got together and said we would produce voluntarily and this was a pact which was between all the big superstore the stores like Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda's Marks and Spencer, the Cooperative and they agreed with the government that they would voluntarily reduce plastic bags and at that time we were part of the mission to replace the single-use plastic bags with sustainable bags and these were made in our factory in South India made from either cotton or and in the case of some products hessian the jute bag which we produced for Tesco the ladybird bag, which had a ladybird print was made in our factory. So that was the start of our business. But we didn't really just stop at just making bags and our business grew substantially in getting to understand manufacturers and trying to replace packaging. You know if you can replace plastic with an equal packaging. That is wonderful because it is a repetitive packaging. You know, many of the packaging that we get is repetitive. You get a product, it repeats, you know, you get a box of toothpaste, it's repetitive. And if you can reduce the carbon footprint by replacing some elements of it, you can't really replace everything. But you can replace some parts of it with eco packaging. And that's been our mission. And when Smruti joined the business, she was quite keen on making it fun, you know, packaging, if it can be design-oriented, then it becomes fun. And it is nice to have nice designs designed properly. That would be part of the whole product, whether it's the bags over the packaging. So that's how our business developed.

03:49
Okay,

03:51
sorry, sorry, go ahead.

05:04
Okay, so the company's core supreme creations, and the label that's present on our products is called bags of ethics. And it's a really humble little label with a smiley face on it. And the reason why we wanted to put a label on our products was to give consumers comfort and interest to know the provenance of the product, and to have a deep emotional connection to the product, and to have comfort that it has been produced in ethically audited factory strict strictly adhering to rules around what materials that we're using, how we treat our people, and how we're also considering the impact on the planet. And this label started life inside the product. But over the past few years has become a really valuable component for our clients and our collaborations. So whether we were working with the British fashion Council, or some fashion retailers or the likes of Nike and Google, many of these brands now want to affiliate with us as a business not just as a manufacturer of a high-quality product or a manufacturer who can hit a certain price target or a manufacturer who can hit some sustainability credentials, but a manufacturer that can directly connect with the consumer and has credible credentials that the consumer can relate to. And so that's been a real journey for us as a business. And through design and through fashion, we've been able to really support change in consumer behaviour. And their perception of, you know, this is not just a hippie product that we're trying to flog you know, it's actually a collectible piece, whether it's a tote bag or whether it's a piece of reusable packaging, or whether now in recent months, we've been producing reusable face masks because, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, we knew that the single-use plastic masks and PPE that maybe the public would have to use could become the next plastic disaster.

07:12
So what's really happened now is that if you go back as I was explaining, perhaps a few minutes ago, at that time when the Court auld pact happened, you know, there was a real concern that we should reduce plastic bags, single-use plastic and so on and so forth. So much work was done. And I have to give credit to all the big retailers and the general public and government they all jointly brought a big campaign to reduce plastic and people were getting more and more aware that single-use plastic is bad. And people started using their, you know, their jute bags or their cotton bags or reusable bags, and they were concerned about reducing plastic and packaging. Now what has happened now, if you see now when you look at the recent COVID experience that we have, we all are now wearing face masks. But it's so tragic to see today that these single-use facemasks are made from plastic. And we're talking of, you know, a single-use face mask can only be used for about four to five hours. You don't have to chuck it. So, you can quite imagine the volume of plastic that is being thrown away. This plastic is actually worse in terms of what's happening because even a bag the plastic bag was being reused in some forms they were taking it back home and reusing it in some form but this single-use facemask is being chucked on the roads, it's being charged anywhere they can find it. And it is then finding its way into the rivers, the oceans. And we're talking of not a few, you know, we're talking of billions, absolute billions. And unfortunately, while the government is now talking about various things, this is an aspect I'm a little surprised as to why they don't make it mandatory for people to not at least, you know, the ordinary public don't need to wear these single-use plastic masks, you know, I can understand if it is the hospital where the standards are different. But for the ordinary, Joe Bloggs on the road, they can very comfortably protect themselves with the cotton face cloths which can be reused you know 50-60 times and that's much more environmentally friendly.

10:02
Don't you think sir?

10:03
Yeah, no, I do. Yeah, I do. And it'd be interesting to you have talked about the fact you're ethically audited in your factory in India. What kind of process do you have to go through for that? And how, how do people feel that that that's been verified or, you know,

10:26
You see when we are dealing with a large store, for example, whether it's Sainsbury's or Boots, or Tesco. To be an approved supplier, you need to be audited on there would be an ethical audit. There would be a technical audit, and there's a commercial audit. You really have to go through these audits to be a supplier because a big store is very, very organised in allowing only a few because there will be thousands of suppliers who are choosing a business for one hour from one of these big stores. Now, as part of the ethical audit, there is a set audit that is there, it can be audited by a third party, but like SGS or Intertek or it could be the store themselves, who may have an audit team. Now, the ethical audit comprises of various aspects of the audit questionnaire, they would want to know what kind of salary is being paid, are people paid a decent living? What are they working on? Are we making people work excessive hours? Are we employing child labour? Do we have enough facilities for them to use good toilet facilities and especially if you look at it today, during COVID times the number of factories In many parts of the world, who've had a big occurrence of COVID are factories, who don't have good sanitary facilities? I mean, we have excellent facilities and what tends to happen is that the various ethical audit questionnaire is actually well designed. And rather than we try and be scared of trying to please the auditor, I've always felt very comfortable asking the auditors to teach us how to get better, because basically, these ethical audits are actually to help us improve not just our, our ethical standards, but also our efficiency because it's good to have, you know, workers who are healthy who are able to come to work, feel happy about it. So, we've had to go through all these ethical audits from various suppliers, various retailers over the past years. And the same thing is the case with technical order, and we are technically audited. So do we have the required machinery required technical knowledge to deliver the products that they have, you know, the recent face masks that we were manufacturing, we are supplying to boots, you know, I can assure you Boots is one of the most difficult retailer to get past because they are a medical retailer? So, their whole culture about an audit is very highly stringent because, you know, you could supply a product where it could kill one of the customers, so they're always worried that any product that is sold by them is a very high standard. So, the oldest

11:45
I was going to ask the... before the podcast started, you talked about having predominantly women working in the factory. I think you mentioned 80%. And I'd love to explore and why that's a good thing, because you were talking about that before. But is that asked about in these audits? And are you and or do you feel you're going above and beyond? What's actually currently being asked for?

14:34
I think what is happening with having women is that over the years, as I said to my first, you know, the general manager was a friend of mine who had a similar kind of ethos.

14:54
Well, I can I mean, I'm going to interrupt you because I think upon a part of the, you know, I think as a, as the daughter of the founder of the business, it's been great. And really, I think from a purely anthropological point of view or sociological point of view, I think we're really interesting business because we can't you know, our heritage is Indian. I'm, you know, British, and we're both British, but you know, our heritage and culture are Indian. And traditionally, Indian women aren't thought of as a sort of, you know, there are very, very strong women in India, but generally, haven't always been traditionally seen as the strongest sex. And but I think by being a daughter, and actually it's been, it's been a wonderful experience to have a father-daughter relationship within the business and the philosophy of promoting women definitely doesn't come from me, but I think the fact that being the daughter of a founder and being an only child means that I'm not actually distinguished as a son or a daughter. And I think by having a philosophy of girls can do it has percolated throughout the entire value chain of the business and the entire culture of the business because whether you're a girl or boy, you can absolutely succeed. And that's been something that I've personally felt as a daughter, you know, I've always had the best access to education the best access to anything regardless of my gender.

16:25
No, but more importantly is the fact that why did we have a woman? Yeah, the issue is that the advantage of empowering very uneducated women is to give them a tool to be a self-sufficient problem with the bulk of the population in the world. You know, you and I are sitting in one of the richest parts of the world. We have access to good education, good facilities, and so on and so forth. But the bulk of the population, they're living in the most impoverished parts of the world. Now, if they continue to do so, right, this is just going to go on. But if you give them a tool, for example, if we decided, when we decided that we want to put more woman, it was a method of giving each of those women who were employed by us a tool to be self-sufficient, and then it becomes generations of people who are completely taken off from that lowest threshold to a higher threshold. See people who joined us, you know, 15 years ago, they are well off now. These were people who were just in their, you know, late teens who joined us who had no knowledge of anything. They were completely ignorant in a developed village educated, we taught them a tool, right? We gave them stitching lessons, we taught them how to print. Now with time, they have become self-sufficient. They themselves have got children; they've given their children because they have the money. They've given their children a good education. So, this whole basis of trying to employ a high, high percentage of women has been a win-win situation because we've got their loyalty. They produce, as I said, today with modern equipment, it doesn't really matter whether you have a man or a woman. In the old days, you know, if you were working in the coal mines, rarely did you have women working in the coal mine because it was different, you know, it was extremely difficult, very hard. It was very difficult for women to work in those circumstances, but it is now manufacturing in the modern manufacturing place. The tools are easy for women to use our printing machines are all automatic. So, it doesn't really need a lot of, and you know, a high amount of lifting to do that. So, I think once you look at it, we mean, to be very honest, we had an idea. And as the idea grew, the original idea was mine in terms of let's have woman, it was just one of those things that we thought we should do. But as it grew, we found that it was an advantage for us. A great advantage because we found that these women were very, very loyal to us. You know, they were, they are still working. They are, they are certainly an asset to us. And it's been a good business practice for us.

19:52
When it comes to running an ethical and sustainable business. What would you say your biggest struggle so far has been? And can you tell us a bit about how you've overcome it?

20:04
Well, my, my feeling on this is that when you try and do sustainable business, I was there, you know, in 2008. And before that, when we were talking about sustainability and people, everyone was talking about sustainable business, you know, you know, this whole thing of being sustainable and when the crash happened, all that was completely ignored. You know, they just didn't have a business today sustainable business today I feel. People talk about it as a tick box. They feel they want to tick that box to say we are sustainable, and it only seems to work when businesses are profitable. When economies are profitable, when businesses are having trouble, that bit of sustainability is chucked out of the window. Because the tick boxes are no longer relevant. And somehow, I've felt that it's so sad that people are not don't you think so

21:11
yeah, I mean, I think I think some of our best clients have really embraced sustainability at their core. And it's an absolutely critical principle of theirs to work with a supplier like ours, but when we're competing for contracts, you know, the first thing to get through the door is you know, what's your price? Yeah. Um, and there are in an international marketplace, which is really competitive. You know, price is the number one factor that gets you through to the next round of applications in the next round of tenders. And I think sustainability is always asked about, it is currently being asked about, but it is definitely a separate, separate form separate. It's not intertwined into a relevancy of winning a contract. It's sort of a secondary or tertiary requirement. But I think some of the most successful businesses do have a medium to long term vision, you know, the likes of Unilever, who really embraced sustainability at their core, and are working really hard to, you know, get rid of single-use plastic within their packaging and a variety of other initiatives from a social perspective. They're the ones who have the deep pockets, but they have embraced it. And there are very small businesses that also embrace sustainability. There are there is a core in the middle where, especially within the fast fashion industry, and there's, you know, it's pretty evident. Price really is absolutely critical. But what's probably a really interesting move is that the consumer is becoming more powerful. And the consumer is obviously King, the customer is always King, and they are now dictating what key principles are important for a brand to associate themselves with whether it's their Black Lives Matter movement. And, you know, how, how, what's the position of

23:10
What also happened is the fact that you the social media, yeah, I'm very, very critical because yeah, in the old days, you know, you had things which were in print, and it took time to read and react in terms of these days, social media so rapid, that, I mean,

23:27
it's a pro and a con. When you talk about social media, I think there's a requirement for greater transparency. And it's brilliant that there are lots of documentaries like the blue planet, which are highlighting issues around sustainability, and that then percolates into what we consume, and how we shop. But I would say that, there's, I think there's more of an emphasis on the consumer now and I think there should be more of an emphasis so you know, part of the supply chain, I do get upset that the supply chain is always considered as a manufacturing issue, or even a retailor issue you but actually as consumers, we are all critically part of that supply chain. If we are last minute and require a purchase to be done within the hour, an online purchase to be delivered within the hour, we are part of that decision-making process of how that retail or how that organisation operates. And therefore, the carbon footprint. And the, say, for example, you know, the likes of Amazon have completely changed how consumers view shopping, and how consumers demand shopping. And that speed in which we're requiring things or the ability to return things, you know, has percolated into the consumer psyche, but actually, it's actually creating far more waste than is necessary so there's not a considered purchase. So, I think now is the time where consumers really need to embrace themselves as being part of the supply chain. Because the power is really with the consumer. We can say all that we want about retailers and their methodology of choosing suppliers. But the consumer at the end of the day is the one spending their pound and choosing which retailer to buy from.

25:10
And it is that education though, isn't it? Because the consumer wants to have a T-shirt for 99 P and won't pay for more. No. Although

25:23
They will absolutely will pay for more.

25:26
I agree. I think the problem is that you know consumers will not pay more if you're getting a T-shirt for 99 pence you can see what you want. But what is very important is that the whole ethos of you know there are some consumers would be much more some people will not be and unfortunately the issues as you rightly say education and when you look at certain things in fact I was in South India on the foothills of off of the Neil Gary's and I was walking with an American, one early morning. And he was looking at all these spices being grown right? Now when you look at the spices that we eat,

26:18
and the price we pay

26:21
is so pathetic. When you look at the amount of work that is required to grow it, to pick it by hand, you know, you have tea being picked by hand. And in a whole day, they just pick a little bit of that tea. And that particular person who's picking the tea gets a small amount of money and we are not willing to pay that price that really eventually should go to that person has actually taken so much effort to do it.

26:56
is that true cost isn't it and that's where I was trying to get to it. About 99 p per t-shirt, I think you're right smoochy I think people will pay more for it. But it's the education piece behind it. It's allowing people to understand what it is that has gone into that. So, picking the T, for a whole day for that tiny amount, if people actually understood what was going on behind the scenes, I think people would definitely make better-informed decisions. And particularly if you start to think about how long that particular t-shirt is, and when we know that the some of the fashion houses that we're talking about, I'm not going to name any names, but they have the 99 p t-shirts that I've watched once and fall apart, because they're just not well made. And actually hot. If you look at the lifecycle of one of those products, it's actually possibly more expensive than buying a 10 pounds. 15 pounds t-shirts.

27:57
Yeah, and you know what happened to that American when, when we finished our war, he said I would never, never want to pay the prices that I'm paying sitting in New York for some spices, some Herbs, and I feel so ashamed that we're paying so little. And we don't mind walking down to one of these McDonald's and paying far more, just to get something fast food, you know. So really, when we look when Benny actually saw what was how much effort it takes to grow, spices, so many things that be we take for granted being grown, it takes, you know, it takes a full cycle to grow something and then the manual effort of picking it, then processing it and then coming to the west. Where we consume it is a big, big task in which a fair price has not been paid.

28:59
And I think seeing believing you know, and we were really lucky to be part of the Prince of Wales his business in the community initiative and we won one of the awards for national excellence in the supply chain. And but one of the key principles of the Prince's Trust is seeing is believing. And I think that more work really needs to be done on not scaring people into supply chain disasters. You know, you know, currently, the only recognition of the British public of what a factory is like is the terrible factory disaster in Bangladesh. You know, there are some real success stories. And I think that more work needs to be done. Firstly, on empowering the consumer to say actually, you have a really important part to play in deciding how you consume when you return something, what price you pay and which retailer to buy from. And the only way to educate them is to have really positive documentaries that highlight wonderful business practices that are happening around the world. Because the more you scan longer people and the more you sort of hit them over ahead with a, you know, with a, with a, with a stick, the more they don't want to really look at it, you know, and I think that's what banks have ethics is bags of ethics is a positive label that tries to celebrate the people and the planet along the entire supply chain, right from the consumer, to the designers, to the retailers, to the stitching person, the packing person, the thread person. And, and, and personifying each and every role across the supply chain because it's like watching a cooking programme, you know, suddenly you have this great appreciation of how to make a you know, how to make a zoo for a Sunday roast, you know, you wouldn't even think about it, but now that there's such a such an interest in cooking programmes on TV, why can't there be an interest in, you know, manufacturing processes, because we all have a part to play because we're all consumers.

30:57
You know, the recent mosques that we launched with the British Fashion Council, which was called the Great British face covering. It was a design project and it was a success story which we've had these bags over the label. The reason I'm, I'm bringing this up is because when we have a success story, it can be a win-win for everyone. We had this project, which combined leading designers, British designers, like Julian McDonald, Amanpour, or Liam Hodges or rixo, Christopher Raven, now, they were during that pandemic time. You know, they were really in a situation where the retail trade had dried up. Fashion was in a real crisis. They were able to participate in the project and benefit from it. We were able to donate a large amount of money to the British fashion council to a children's charity to the NHS COVID fund. And at the same time produce something really wonderful made from cotton sateen fabric, which reduces plastic but plastic single-use plastic as I was sending you, you know the amount of single-use plastic that is going into the environment with these single-use face masks. Is horrendous. You know, we're talking billions. Billions of masks and UCL have just done a study. Well actually not just done a study but University College London released assessing if every single person in the UK was to use disposable PPE, we'd create 128,000 tonnes, and um you know, these are really light items 128,000 tonnes Yeah.

33:05
So, this has been getting into the, into the whole environment, the rivers, the oceans. And whilst we tried to reduce plastic bags for the last 1012 years, this is a monster of a disaster.

33:23
And I'm talking about sustainability and the UCL study. What, what have you done as an organisation by looking at sustainability and environmental management as a whole?

33:40
I mean, it expands across a variety of metrics, right from the materials that we choose to use, and the pledge that we make on the products that we make, so we try and promote at least so for the masks, we say that they should be at least reused 50 times. For all of our packaging, it should be at least 5000 times. So, reusability is an absolutely critical component of our environmental pledge. So that comes from the materials that we use but also to the manufacturing standards. You know, you just referenced a T-shirt which might fall apart after one wash. We wouldn't ever have something like that going through our quality control.

34:20
And you see insert a seal the terms of when we make packaging, and especially when you talk about t-shirts and other products. There's a lot of inks which are used which are not environmentally friendly. Our products are not the cheapest, then we use inks which are compliant, you can reach compliance. We, we use materials which are completely biodegradable, most of our products like cotton or canvas or hessian, you know degrades within a matter of days, not thousands of years. In terms of our manufacturing, all our machines are the modern generation. So, they consume very little electricity. And our factories are all very open. So, there's very little electricity that we need during the day in terms of lighting. It's all open, it's bright sunshine. So that's, that's the other area. All the inks can be just washed into the, into the, into the gutters because it's completely harmless. And so, we made sure that all these are, are ticked off when we were discussing with the designers because the other thing that we have seen is if you give an option to the designer, right at the time of the concept of design, even at this time when we manufacturing the mass, we thought the designers look please don't give us something to so designed that we can't produce it the way we want to.

36:08
So for example, you know, the brief was to reduce wastage in within fashion, you'll have something called a placement print versus an all-over print and we made sure that the designs were created in a way that didn't create wastage in material and even that, that tiny, that tiny request triggered the thought process with the designers and so they design something in mind that reduces the wastage in material consumption which is a huge saving in terms of material waste

36:43
because forgive my ignorance but because cutting the way that you're cutting, yeah, okay,

36:48
Because cutting.

36:48
But you see what also happens is when you cut it also depends as to how the print has been laid out. For example, if you have a print, suppose you have a Picture. To give you an example, suppose we have a picture of your face, right? Now, if we cut off your face, it's a good look good. But if it's a repetitive image, like this one that I can show you, it doesn't matter where we cut it. So really, so the, it's a simple thing does that, you know, most of these designers are really well trained that they can design, any design or modify any design to make sure that it's friendly for certain types of manufacturing. So, what I'm trying to explain to you is that when you talk about sustainability, it's, it starts from the beginning, right from when you start when you do the sketches on the drawing board. And as long as you have that as part of your, your psyche, your ethos of the company, it then becomes a lot easier. You know, you, you know, if you know that you're building a semidetached house right from the beginning, rather than, you know, a flat, your designer would use everything in his power in his knowledge to build that. But it should be part of your DNA. And that is, I feel part of the sustainable aspect of businesses, you know, it can't be as I explained to you, it can't be just a little tick that you do when the going is good. And when the going is bad, that tick disappears immediately because you say, look, you know, I don't want to know about it because I've got other urgent and important things to do of surviving as a business.

38:57
I mean, I was around and running a business Helping organisations be sustainable back in 2008. And what you said resonated with me and I can I actually remember what you were talking about of people just going actually, we're going to hold back on sustainability but at this very moment in time with something similar going on with regards to P organisations, being holding their purse strings closer to them. I actually feel that it's happening less and sustainability is much higher on the agenda with the organizations we're working with and where, I mean, we've just signed off Finisterre I'm doing a project with Finisterre who you know, are in the fashion industry. And their sustainability is core to their brand and core to what it is they're doing. And I think there are more organisations like them that are I'm going to the public, actually, this is who we are. We are sustainable. And you pay a tiny bit more, but you get a lot more from it.

40:12
Well, I think I mean, I think everyone wants to be sustainable. I think it's cool right now to be sustainable. It's like sexy to be sustainable. And it's, and there are occasions when you know, brands are being branded as greenwashing because you know, they've done a collection, which is made out of organic cotton and a bit of 10 sell, and a bit of this and a bit of that, and then suddenly, their entire business is considered sustainable. And so, I think there's a balance to be had about, you know, actually encouraging businesses to be quite transparent. And look, sustainability is really difficult to define. And it depends on what metrics that you want to define yourself on whether it's only carbon or only compostable or only water-based or a combination of all or whether it also incorporates the people because actually, you know, something that we've been battling against and, and getting quite miffed about at times is cotton is actually quite a bad rap in the past couple of years because of, you know, a couple of documentaries, and actually a deep dive into making snap judgments about a product about a crop rather, it's really important to do. So, for example, you know, avocado is obviously a really trendy crop one year and then it's pomegranate the next year, and then it's coconut water the following year. But the ramifications of it something being trendy or not trendy, or dramatic for the people that are involved. You know, farmers are making decisions about what crop they're planting and how they're going to plant it and their irrigation systems, and you know, the number of teams that they need to employ in their farms. And in an overnight, their entire industry can be, you know, turned upside down. And so, with the case of cotton, I think it's really important to understand that there is some cotton as some cotton districts within the world, which does require a lot of artificial irrigation. And there are some districts in the world specifically the farmers that we work with, where cotton is produced on naturally irrigated farms, and well-irrigated farms through, you know, the through rainwater. And if you didn't have cotton growing there, you'd have floodplains. So, it's really important to understand the pros and cons of each and every crop. And obviously, this is, you know, requires a lot more education, a lot more of a deep dive, which can be a bit boring. But I think the more of an informed and well-balanced discussion that we can have around sustainability and not being so black and white, I think the better it is.

42:44
Sorry, just

42:46
what would you say your metrics are around sustainability? Please see,

42:51
As I said, you are on metrics, go back to the basic DNA of our business. Everything that we do we look at it from a sustainable point of view. You know, for example, in hiring people has to be sustainable. Because the first thing that I believe, is we don't hire mercenaries, you know, we don't be an exceptionally high amount of money, we pay them well. But then they all work for us for many, many years simply because we want them to be sustainable. You know, they, there is no point in having a business where I'm sustainable, and my people are not sustainable in their DNA. Their core belief has to be sustainable. So, waste of any kind. We don't, we don't want that. So, everybody in the business has a core of being sustainable. of using sustainable product products. As I said, whether it's the eggs whether the electricity whether it's the way we manufacture products, keep wastage to the minimum Because at every level because I am sitting here in London, but the manufacturing is taking place thousands of miles away. It's these managers, it's the various supervisors and the workers who have to have sustainability as part of their DNA.

44:18
So, when we recruit, we have a keen, a, as I said, we

44:25
encourage women to come and work for us. But the other one is tools to ensure that the DNA of that person is quite related to our ideas. And we've always found that not paying someone over the dog where they become mercenaries is a good way to go about it. If they love working for us, if they love the environment, they love to production we do. That's quite important.

44:57
Yeah, I think like your question is almost eluding to like a metric and a formula, and I think that's, you know, it's everything should be based on quantitative and qualitative. And I think that the critical component of having a culture, that's about a core principle I, let's remove waste is probably better than Okay, guys, we need to hit a 20% reduction in waste, because you can actually just pass that through a change in your philosophy. Yeah, so it's breeding innovation. At the very basic level, every single person in the company has the power to change protocol, if they feel it will be better. And, you know, we've experienced that even in the production of the masks, you know, it's been amazing, you know, we have the lowest quote-unquote denominator within the factory, actually, everyone is equal but in you know, you have the packing lady who's packing saying, actually, I don't think we should be doing this way. Maybe we should fit it in a, particularly different way so that we can save on air So do this better. And that culture, I think is probably a bit more powerful than just having a particular metric metrics are really important quantitative metrics is really, really important. Because you know, it gives you a focus, it gives you a target, and we do have metrics and we do have targets. But I think what we would love for people your listeners to really take away is that culture is far more important. And it should come from the heart. Really, it shouldn't. It shouldn't be a well, it, you know, I'm a Sustainability Officer. And that's just me, you know, everyone's a Sustainability Officer in your business.

46:36
Yeah, I totally agree. I think you've hit the nail on the head, I think it is that culture. And it's embedding that culture within your organisation is will drive your business through sustainability, which incorporates every, all aspects of the business, is that I mean, finishing up here, what's the best way that we can connect with you and understand more about you guys? So

46:59
You can email us or

47:01
you can email, I mean, our company's core supreme creations. And we have various different countries that we operate in. So, if your audience is global, we have, we trade across Europe and America. And we obviously have a base in India, um, bags of ethics is our social media platform. So, find us on Instagram, on YouTube, on Facebook, and then find, I think I'm on LinkedIn, I don't think

47:29
you can find too old for LinkedIn; I don't even know what

47:31
You're not too old for LinkedIn at all. I've actually read it on LinkedIn.

47:38
So I mean, we'd be delighted to work with some of your listeners, on any product innovations, and any ideas because we are a very open business to you know, we're a commercial business, but we love connecting and collaborating. So, if there are any interested businesses who want to learn more from us, we'd be delighted to do

47:57
And also, as you as you were talking about there are many, many products that you were talking about before we started this and you said you were connected to some wonderful businesses. Yeah, we'd be very happy to work with them in a very collaborative way because we are a manufacturer. Although we manufacture large volumes. We have a large team of engineers’ technicians, designers, who can collaborate in producing something very best for something which is tailor-made for that particular manufacturer for that particular user. We work with the Christian view. Funny enough, we supply them bags, and but we also supply Tesco. We also supply the shop for small retail The what I'm Brian explained is that because the way our manufacturing is structured, it doesn't matter whether you are buying a few hundred from us or buying a large volume, we can structure it we can give the same amount of attention. It can be made to Bellamy to that particular consumer, who might, who might come along and say, Look, this is my concept. You know, many, many years ago I remember lush came to us and said, Look, we want to do something which is sustainable. We want to promote our particular brand. But we want to give it away to some of our clients who want to have a picnic. So, we made a picnic blanket for them. very colorful, huh? Well, yeah, it has to be right. So, what I'm saying is it's not just one product because it can be tailor-made to a particular consumers requirement

50:03
for corporates at the moment, however, I will plug that we are doing a corporate offer for the facemask so for anyone returning to work in corporate offices, we'd be delighted to offer the Great British designer face coverings at a corporate rate.

50:18
Also, they have their own designs, we can do their own designs too.

50:22
Brilliant. Well, maybe we could put a link to that on our websites.

50:25
Yeah, because it'd be cool to have your own company logo on the facemask and you can have, for example, you can have slogans. Inside, you know, of this great British designer face coverings. Each of them has a slogan.

50:43
It's like a supportive message. Okay. So, for Rick so it's in unity there is strength and

50:53
creativity through community. I'm loving light. There are some really lovely supportive messages. For the user, and also the header card, we have a message that says lamode. So, boom. Yeah. Brilliant.

51:14
Thank you very much. Both of you. Thank you for being on today. Yeah, I think really enjoyed it. And it's been really, really, really interesting to listen to more about the whole, just how, what you're building and what you're doing. So, thank you. Thank you. Today we have an awesome father-daughter geo, from London running an ethical bag, mask, packaging company. And they have a huge insight into how sustainability works as a whole within the fashion industry and it's really interesting to listen to talk to them and understand more about what thought has gone into designing a for example bag and what you waste to not waste. And anyway, I will let the podcast explain itself. I hope you enjoy it as much as me. Thank you