right um i think we'll begin good afternoon everybody my name is claire fenelow i'm the executive director at evcom we're delighted to have you all with us this afternoon for our final webinar of the year it has been a webinartastic yeah for evcom we have uh certainly managed to cover a lot of ground so far um this is our file for the year but it will not be our final we intend to carry on with webinars into next year and we'll be releasing a program early january but this webinar this evening is establishing a sustainable standard for events and we are delighted to have on the panel anna abdulmur from isla richard kassar from the ethical tea company um and manuela cadasso from cheerful 21st facilitating the panel will be sam wilson who will go into a bit more detail with the panel um about what they do and why they're here but that's just to let you know who will be on board um sam wilson um is a long-term supporter of evcom and is also one of our business partners and we're delighted to have her facilitate today she is md of syntero associates a specialist consultancy that works with creative agencies to deliver an integrated approach to sustainability helping clients to achieve international certification be call and undertake carbon analysis to align with 1.5 degrees and target net zero sintera's clients have included drpg stage struck excel london aeg presents hearst magazines havas and m c sachi so some really big hitters there so without further ado i shall pass you over to sam and she will get the uh proceedings underway just quickly to add if you have any questions as usual could we ask you to please put them in the chat box and we will try to answer them as we go along and um any that are left we will sweep up at the end but um in the chat box please and we'll try and address them as we go so thank you very much and sam over to you thank you so much for that lovely introduction claire and a warm welcome to everybody um it would be like claire said let's keep this session session as interactive as possible so please just keep that zoom chat going i'll weave as many in as i can and if we can't don't worry we'll get to yours at the end um so the first thing i was thinking of to introduce this webinar today was something i watched recently which really really choked me off actually has anyone seen the david attenborough's new document documentary a life on our planet just pop something in the chat if you have just but yes or no let's see some interaction this afternoon here's his uh here's his uh lovely photo here amazing man you can access it through netflix so maybe we can also ah peter's saying not yet it's well worth it peter it's well worth it so if we can put in yes it's brilliant ah there we go um so if we can put the link to where you can get it from netflix netflix into the zoom chat that would be really helpful if somebody could do that and then that everyone can can know where to go if they want to see it so a summary of that is he's 93 years old and during his life on this planet he's seen firsthand the monumental scale of humanity's impact on nature and he actually calls it the sixth mass extinction event which is um quite something and if we look at this next slide we'll see why he does that now if you look at this it looks rather complicated it's not actually what i want you to look at here is that top right hand quadrant where all the green triangles are those are the uh issues that are the biggest risk and this is undertaken by the world economic forum it's the 2020 global risk landscape so you can see here on this uh on this graph that impact and likelihood on that top right hand quadrant it's all about environmental impact and climate change those are the risks that we're facing and that's um as compared to things like societal risks geopolitical risk technological risks so we can see here this is the reason why everyone now has this forefront of their mind there is no getting away from it we must put this at the top of our gender now and and i think i've come for doing this because this is one of the reasons we're doing this webinar it's so we can support efcom it's so we can support everyone who's here with us this afternoon to take action and get ready so we're very lucky today to be uh joined by an esteemed panel uh that comprise those who are doing ground-breaking work uh and i know some of these people um personally and they really are spending their whole days and weekends helping uh helping the events and communications industry to gear up um so if i could please if you could introduce yourself now that would be great anna can i start with you i'm muted hi everybody um nice to be joined this afternoon by you all and thanks sam for the intro and my name is anna abdelnor i am co-founder of a new industry initiative called isla which is focusing on accelerating the event industry's transition to a sustainable future we have 12 founding member agencies after our launch in september including manuela who will introduce herself um and a number of other fantastic agencies including drpg that sam's worked with and we're now up to 40 members looking at collaborating um to solve some of our biggest industry challenges we focus on education and facilitation standardization uh signposting guidance that sort of thing so um it's been a really interesting year launching during a global pandemic but uh it's as pressing as it ever was um more pressing if anything now that people are kind of waking up to the crises um of the uh damage to our climate um so it's been a very challenging but very exciting um year for isla thank you so much anna um and if i could come to you please now manuela yeah sure and so my name's manuela um i'm project director at cheerful 21st and we're a brand experience agency and like anna mentioned we are one of the founding members of the isla initiative and my role in the agency primarily as project director as my day-to-day job but also i am the sustainability ambassador for the agency and what that means is that um i work closely with anna um and you know take part in panels like this and then pass on the information to the rest of the agency we also have a sustainability working group in the agency um which is really great because it allows us to share ideas how can we be more sustainable and personally i am really really passionate about it because it is something that we all need to start considering really seriously and um all agencies have to come together not just agencies across the supply chain which we will talk more about later but i feel that everybody has to come together to for that common goal thank you thank you manny and and lovely that you mentioned supply chain because bring richard in at this point which is going to say that yeah supply chain my name's richard and i i run an own uh ethical tea company and our job is to simply uh provide a service uh an apparel and print service um communicating uh the best apparel that's already there um it's it's a fortunate position because there's not there's not much work to do the product's already there it's just really making people aware of it and communicating why it's important to use it and also important to communicate you're using it so we're trying to do that we work with organizations some proud proud work we've organized big organizations like united nations through down to small diy bands um and smaller small to medium companies and events and festivals obviously our industry's been really affected by this year as well i like like everybody but particularly the live the live sector so but it's been positive still where people are i'm seeing to get a lot of feedback from people wanting to know more about um sustainability so yeah i've seen that increase this year thank you richard and of course you come from one of those environmental hot spots don't you sort of the textile industry which has numerous sort of um areas i suppose that are incredibly important and one of the things i loved when you spoke there was that you said you tell people why you do it you don't just um sell them the apparel you say this is this is where it comes from this is why we're doing this and that's incredibly important i think if we're going to so one of when when i introduce the business now and people are asking information well i mean i've worked in merchandise for 20 years and it's not always been provided in ethical merchandise it's a realization i've had lately my career and we're we're going to get onto the responsibilities in a little later and part of that as well is that i was working for someone so when you're working for someone it's a lot harder to to have your personal responsibilities but when i'm creating my own business it was something that i needed to make sure i was i was looking at so yeah that's really inspiring thank you richard um so thinking here about misnomers around sustainability um and from my experience people often think that sustainability is great good to do but it costs more and this even comes down to when i when i teach my third years every year i do a survey in uh in the week one of our semester and every year they tick the box it's nice but it costs more by the end of the course of course they don't tick that book but um really what we're talking about here is um is about efficiency it's about the reduction of waste in all its forms um and it's also all about those cross-cutting environmental social and economic benefits that you get from taking action the triple bottom line as we call it profit people planet and i'm wondering um anna what do you think some of the misconceptions might be around sustainability from your point of view and what can we do as an industry to try and break down some of these misconceptions oh it's a big question you can handle it i think one of the core misconceptions is um that sustainability is a nice to have um i think a lot of people look at it and sort of say oh what are our sustainable options um or can we afford them or do they fit in with our current planning and so we end up in this cycle of it never happening because it's it's considered a nice to have whereas actually when you look at something like health and safety which is legislated and it's mandated and it's a requirement across every project it's not a question of whether it's nice to have it's something that we have to do and i think pushing that back to the people planet profit model sam is that you know the health and safety element takes the people peace into that sustainability as a work stream as a budgetary item within um a an event budget as something that we need to be focusing on would tick that planet box as well and it's not about box ticking but it's about showing that mandate for it so i think the the idea that it's nice to have is quite a common misconception actually it's critical that we have sustainability as part of our work streams across our events um i mean i could keep i could go on and tell you some other misconceptions but i don't want to hog the floor so um i think just in terms of that point what can we do i think it's about planning sustainability and right at the beginning of the project when you have your kickoff meeting i think that's one of the easiest things you can possibly do is have a 30-minute sustainability meeting um considering it as a mandatory rather than nice to have as a key action element yeah so integrating it in anna so it becomes a part of and maybe even like i know some of our clients put it on the budget line and it's an opt-out for the clients it's in there and it doesn't feel so good to opt out does it no it's a bit uncomfortable exactly anna exactly and and and and they don't and this is the thing so i think it's also about us educating clients isn't it um manny what are your thoughts around that from the from an agency point of view yeah i do i agree with anna um i think the easiest thing is to implement that at the beginning but also something that we have also been working with and learning about how we can as an agency inform our clients so for example you know giving them the option will actually it doesn't we've got capacity to influence the client on the decisions that they make so it's about understanding what sections of the event have we got influence on what sections don't we and then what other sections could we potentially look at alternatives so things like um travel sometimes you can't avoid people traveling to a destination so that would be one that you might not have as much influence on but actually on the ground travel you can influence the client on how they're getting delegates from the airport to the venue et cetera when we go back to real life meetings and events but for us also i think i would say that usually clients would think on the whole that particularly in high-end and luxury that sustainability doesn't translate to high-end and luxury that you know you can't do certain things if it's um that you want to be um high-end sorry but isn't sustainable so i think it's it's about understanding there is so much option and i think richard would agree that there are so many suppliers now that are sustainable and that are providing those alternatives and you can do luxury events and incentives and be sustainable and do simple meetings and be sustainable so i think the options available to us now are getting bigger and bigger and actually there are different cost price points as well so it doesn't all have to be expensive um i think it's just from an agency perspective there's a bit more work that has to be done at the beginning and doing a bit more research and and planning but once you've done that if you do it at the beginning it's easy to continue as we move through so yeah i would say and of course the lovely thing is most of the clients that we work for are from one of those large companies which now have to report absolutely environmental social governance so you can find their report online and then you can use that to weave in or lots of sort of roi opportunities if you like in terms of where you've been able to to bolster and support their their corporate uh sustainability agenda which is uh which is a lovely thing to be able to do if that's brought in as anna said right at the beginning from tender to pitch to kick off if it's woven into that um richard you've got a slightly i would say a slightly different viewpoint there because we've been talking a lot about environmental impact uh so far but you come from a environmental yes but also another point of view there can you share that with us well the sustainability is um sort of on a workers workers side as well you know the sustainability of working life for especially in areas that are outside of our immediate um society as well um the cotton industry is is one of the most devastating industries um to the planet and um and when we was just talking about writing in the small things like on co2 from a standard men's large white t-shirt to use to use that as a comparison for light for like you're using about 2 700 liters of water per t-shirt and when that water's not coming from a naturally naturally um resource with plenty of resource um replenished resource the irrigation that that causes the the water diversion causes huge problems some of the massive biggest environmental disasters uh for example you've got the rlc in uzbekistan uh i sent a link over i think it may be available somewhere is back in the 60s and 70s it was the fourth largest lake and within 40 years it's now desert um and so it has a huge impact um on a carbon footprint level um there's seven kilos of co2 generated per t-shirt whereas with the t-shirt we supply and this is where the simple choices you um you can make it's got 700 grams of co2 so you've got roughly about six kilos a t-shirt so if you all got an event and you're using 500 t-shirts for delegates and you choose to use just a simple choice of this t-shirt that t-shirt you're saving three tons of co2 on your event and and so that's that for us that's the small choices we want to we want to make sure make sure people are aware of that they're paying for it when they're not using a conscious choice you are paying for the opposite you know and there's right now there's not much difference between the um cost of the t-shirt so they're cost comparative uh and actually a better better garment as well so yeah there's there's much more than just the environment of course the environment's huge and there are massive impacts of the non-organic cotton industry on that but it's also for workers wise because some of the most abused workers in the world come in the garment industry and there's a lot of green washing there's a there's audit companies that have got brilliant certifications and you they could consistent and persistent reports coming out of those places of as workers abuses you know so you need to be careful we need to be sort of trying to do a bit of research and that's what we're trying to do we're trying to sort of say hey look look at this look at this link look at that link these are the people the kind of people that are using these t-shirts just to give you a very easy consumer choice when you're making your choices this is a really great idea richard that you're bringing up here and and it's one of the things that struck me we have to be so careful where we're investing our money don't we we have to be so careful what we're buying and and you can look at your dripping tap but if you do that and you're not thinking about what's in your supply chain in terms of what you've just shared in terms of those environmental impacts you're missing the elephant in the room so it's so important isn't it a hot spot what are those biggest impacts and of course where you can make the biggest uh influence when you're when you're uh an agency is you can choose what to buy well i'm sure the others would agree that i mean this is just my area which is apparel and that's it i'm sure these kind of choices some choices can have even bigger impacts and some smaller but it's all it's all a similar choice if we could if we could be presented as uh people that run events with some simple to make choices then i think most people will make them and especially if they're elicited correctly as well the information behind it so where does the responsibility lie anna do you want to come in there and talk a bit more about that sure i think just just before i do to allude to the previous point um that richard was making is that actually there's a huge resource within our supply chains you know supply chains exist because they provide services and expertise and knowledge um that we buy and so being able to bring our suppliers into the conversation a lot sooner when we're as you know as agencies or as event owners or brands actually you know the benefit of that on our on our events is massive you know if you were able to kind of bring richard in for example right at the beginning you know you're going to produce merchandising then you have a much clearer idea about the impact of that merchandising how they can respond how they can support you with your sustainability aims and so on because you know they're experts and we we turn to them for a reason because they have knowledge that we don't so i think that's just a really you know to push that out there as a message i think is a really powerful to lean on our supply chain but i think that also kind of leads into the responsibility question that it's everybody's responsibility i think maybe that's one of the other big misnomers is that it's somebody else's problem to deal with um i think a lot of the time we we are all across the chain whether we're kind of full end suppliers whether we're a venue or an agency throughout that chain it's always pushed back to the m's client that it's dictated by the client and so we we don't have any responsibility it's not our money and it's not our choice and i think um actually if we can lead the change from the other way from the bottom of the supply chain you know and and also from brands top down which is what they're doing they're asking for sustainable then actually we can collectively engage to look at those core problems and um problem solve them so it's a it's everybody's responsibility it's no single individual or no single business is responsibility to solve this problem we have to do it together yeah absolutely i couldn't agree with you more it's not it no longer can we say we'll just leave it to this person or we can't do it because of that person yeah do you have any thoughts upon that many yeah i was just gonna say actually um to anna's point about um the responsibility and where that lies often as an agency uh when you're planning an event there will be last minute things that you need to buy or you know the last minute panic set pieces or whatever it is and you run to ikea or you you know you buy off amazon and we've all done it i'm guilty of it and it's it's kind of like a safety net that we've all gotten used to that you know you need something last minute right i'll order it online and that's it and i think to put the responsibility on us um and lean more in our supply chain that piece of work has to be done as an agency i guess and really build a robust network of suppliers and you know work with people like richard and and have them on board even if you're not using them for a particular event but at least you have that network and you know where to go to to make those more conscious choices rather than just the last minute the client says i need a hundred t-shirts okay the first thing you'll do is just google find whatever pops up first and because it's such a short turnaround you'll go ahead and just order the most uh well i would say the most cost effective but also the easiest and the person who can ship the fastest etcetera so i think it's yeah it's just about planning and it is like i said earlier it's a little bit more effort at the beginning but once you kind of get into that motion and way of working then it should hopefully you know work out and i think sorry just to jump in there but to that to what you're saying manuela about we have these ultimate requests and we do and they're you know it's the bug bearer of an event producer's life the last minute requests and snags on site but i think one of the key things that we can be doing and it's not always easy to do it in these situations that is questioning the need you know actually supply clients have their own event stakeholders you know they are the event teams that deliver this with stakeholders and so they are in a similar way behold them to what their their end user and or or event owner or brand owner is asking for but there is this question of saying that's fine we can facilitate the thing but do we need it is there an alternative solution that doesn't have the same impacts as buying 100 t-shirts that we probably don't need anyway because we're not going to run out or you know actually can we pass them out at the end of the event rather than the beginning of the event which gives us a longer lead time to use one of our more trusted suppliers etc so it's really around pushing that question of yes we can facilitate can we do it in a different way that has less impact and again not necessarily as easy to do that and practice it in the moment but if we can start trying to do that practice it becomes more commonplace and we're pushing that back on to our event owners as well to sort of say hey have you asked yourself this question um which is quite powerful i think when you actually stop and take a step back i i love that thought anna thank you for sharing that and and the whole idea and i've worked with a number of um event companies over the year and we've had to frame when a client has said something we would like to bring twice as much stock as we need to this show we've had to then go back and explain the impacts that would be caused as a result of that there's triple bottom line impacts economic as well that would be caused as a result of that then frame it within their corporate sustainability agenda and i've actually seen the most amazing conversations with clients take place after that kind of that that opportunity to discuss that has been opened up and i think that's very much around the agency to bring that to the those meaningful conversations to their client communications and then in the context of corporate sustainability and those triple bottom line impacts and why it really would not be a good idea um i've seen that had tremendous results actually um long-term results and thank you everybody and of course we've got drivers for change consumers are now aren't they consuming voting with their pound they are voting with who they work for they are they are seeing themselves as investors when they buy something they're thinking of themselves as investors so there we've got another uh um a driver for changed amongst all the others that we've just spoken about um one of the reasons i work in the creative industry um is because of our unique power to be agents of change we're different we sit in a very different place i think to other industries and i firmly believe that we are pivotal to the challenge of not just climate change but but but also the other impacts that richard has mentioned today in terms of how we um if you like quite simply how we normalize all of these socially and environmentally responsible behaviors as an integral part of our campaigns and events i was watching a film the other day and they had lots of um disposable coffee cups and it's such an easy thing to be able to do when you're developing a creative comms campaign it's just to make sure that you don't have any of those on camera you know that you're thinking all the time about how do i normalize sustainable behaviours across the social and environmental responsible spectrum i think there's similar things to the other day i was actually watching the snooker and um there's a water company who's obviously paid for the snooker players to drink their water at the side and they're all drinking from plastic bottles and i'm like what are you doing why why are you doing that why do you have it in a glass bowl yeah and they pour it into a glass you know it's like i mean just even if it was just from a pr perception point of view but it's just it's just baffling sometimes that people yeah it's shocking blind to it and we i think you know i would go sit if i was to say we do have a responsibility to ensure that to ensure that the message that we give out as a responsible one um yeah i agree with you richard anna and anna or or manuela do you have any and if you want to go first do you have any thoughts on this um in terms of kind of how we can from a communications perspective how we can lead from the front with that change yes yes you know i think um it's we have so much power in the communications industry whether that's through print media digital media to be those agents of change and i think when we look at kind of influencer markets and how people are using their influential statuses to um sell products and so on actually we have opportunities to be really creative as the people who are kind of well not us as event producers types but you know those brands and the communication piece to sort of say let's look at how we can be more responsible how we could be more conscious i mean the millennial and gen z um spending power is slowly going into the biggest spending power globally and so many of so many from gen z are looking to invest in more environmentally environmentally conscious brands as you've identified some what's really difficult i think for brands and are often quite prohibitive to really being agents of change and pushing um positive communications is the fear of greenwashing um and it's real brainwashing is real um so real but there's there's a fear that if you take a stance i think if you take a stance as a brand on climate positivity that and if your whole operation or your whole chain your value chains aren't also entirely sustainable then you get accused of greenwashing so it can sometimes be a lot easier to um hold back from that and not take that path but i think as creative communications industries we don't have to be saying hey we're all singing all dancing perfect it's about encouraging and promoting our consumers our investors our own brand you know our internal and external our full reach about incentivizing and motivating to be better it's an education piece it's not i don't think brands and i don't think else's communications industry have to create these campaigns that tell people how wonderful everything is all the time people know that that's not true and know that there has to be big shifts to change so i think there's an opportunity for us to lead through a positive example without having to say that we are doing everything within our power i think i think we have we have to be honest and transparent and those kinds of conversations that engage people um are are really powerful and they're what people want to know they want to be able to be part of a solution and i think that's a really critical thing and that's something that we can be doing with our sustainable communications campaigns yeah i really agree and i think we've got to use that word greenwash very very carefully because um someone can have all the best intentions and it not work out and if it doesn't work out fine just be honest that we tried this and it didn't work out and we're never ever going to achieve perfect sustainability it's a journey that we're all on so i'm i'm not a great fan of pointing the finger at somebody if they're not perfect i'm not a big fan of that i think it's all about supporting each other on this journey and working in partnership how have how have you found clients manuela in terms of are they receptive in terms of the the ideas that you bring to the table in terms of uh in terms of sustainability and perhaps normalizing those behaviors as part of the experiential campaign absolutely i think definitely in the last year certainly a couple of years to a year um we've been actively having those conversations and like hannah said pushing back a little bit more and questioning things a little bit more and actually going in in the first place with um more sustainable options when it comes to anything any part of the event um i think usually it's welcome and actually what we found that it's driven it's currently a tier one priority for a lot of the clients that we're working with and sustainability across the board like you said the documentaries available all the information it all points to one thing everybody has to make it a tier one priority so actually our jobs in in the sense of talking to clients about sustainability we've been on the same page um we haven't really come across a particular client that has said no i don't want to do it i think there's more that we can do and obviously as an agency we're not we're not perfect but it is on our agenda it is important and we are taking steps to become more sustainable and and ethically sourcing responsibly all of that um which is part of our ethos and what we want to do and i think that then translates when we do pitches when we do proposals and presentations to clients that comes across so it's it's working with them but it's already a priority for a lot of our clients which is really really great to see that's great that's great news i have a question from the audience um is there a point at which agencies wouldn't work with a client who doesn't want to invest uh in a sustainable output so do you think we're going to come to a point where an age where where um an agency would say no i'm not going to work with you because you're associated with a with a carbon-heavy industry gosh that's a big question yeah i don't know if i feel comfortable answering that especially in the current climate um i think that aside it's down for us as an agency if if we're truly if we really believe and want to carry out sustainable practice and you know we talk about it the proposals our pitches our proposals what we go at with the client and suggestions would all be um sustainable in a in an ideal world our proposal to them would be sustainable and they either take it or leave it and that's the way we're working because ultimately we've we've got the responsibility and we're working with our suppliers so we can say no to a supplier in terms of saying no to a client from an unsustainable it's above my pay rate sam so do you know it is that big question isn't it but you know it's being asked out there and one of the things that we're helping clients with is mindful association yeah so sort of you know using using a considering about those associates considering those associations where might the risks be where might the opportunities be how might they be managed for the greater good rather than it being a categorical yes or no i don't think it's that simple if i'm honest with you but thank you for being you know for going at least some of the way towards that answer and i love yours richard i'm sorry well as a surprise point of view we've said no to clients that want to use um come to us with merchandise that we we won't supply but as someone would say about being flexible earlier is um if we've got clients that we're educating um on their merchandise and 90 95 of it is available through the sources that we have and there's a small one that's not available in the color or size or product that's not from our supplied and we would supply it because it means that we're we have them as a client and we can educate on that but if someone comes to us and says no i want to use these and these only then we we kindly sort of decline to work with them because it's not what we do i suppose it's slightly different from from being an agent though i think i think i i think that's a great example though richard i really do it's a great example of where you've you you've really considered it and said on this occasion you can do this because and on this occasion no and maybe it's just as it's important for us in this level we're talking about responsibility and accountability just to say no on occasions maybe that is taking responsibility i think there's a degree of agility that we need to look at as our industry i mean i think everything that the covert 19 impact has shown us is that whilst we can pivot to digital which is what you know we have done as an industry actually it has been it's been terrible you know the impact of the of the pandemic has been really terrible in our industry and i think to a degree of that is um you know the fact that we are a live events industry but i think globally across the world we've seen that there's sort of a lack of agility and adaptability and i think in terms of being able to address that would we wouldn't we work with a client i think there does need to be a degree of agility and adaptability in how you assess this i think exactly like richard and and the way you summarize that sound about um looking at the opportunities to do things differently and engage clients differently but it's and i think from your side manny it's about you know being able to assess the values of that brand against your organization i think it's it's very easy to say no we wouldn't work with this kind of brand or that kind of brand because they're sustainable um or not easy as the case may be but being able to align that to your values and how does that tie in as an agency what's our purpose what do we want to deliver and the same for richard what do you want to do and how do you want to deliver it it works in the same way and there's that adaptability to address some of that um in the way that we approach those difficult conversations yeah i think i do hope there's some red lines for people though because i mean for one i'm hoping everybody wouldn't work the conservative party as a brand i mean that's a bit too far in it i'm not richard i'm not going there i'm not going there i thought i thought you love that you have though um we haven't got too long actually but what a fantastic conversation it's been this afternoon and anna i do want to go to you now now you and i met over a coffee a year ago over a year ago now in brighton where we both live and we talked about what we both do we came to the conclusion really rather quite quickly that um we are both we are we want to work wherever possible in collaboration over competition and i'm really delighted to say that over the kind of we've just let it happen and over the last year we've found areas where we can really support one another so the perhaps the international standards that we have to help people with it's a wider framework but within that sits all these wonderful actions and measurements that eiler is also focusing on yeah um why do you think it's so important to have this unified approach for event sustainability i think the key thing is so that everybody is speaking a common language sustainability is such a complex topic because i think when we talk about it from a top level a lot of people look at it from an environmental perspective but when you break down into environment you're talking about biodiversity water soil erosions impact on seas ice melting there's so many different elements and then when you bring it through into the kind of the social constructs as well in equality and justice education you know all of those different pieces it's such a difficult um subject so having a unified standard having one common voice one place that we're working from as an industry is going to help us um create the transitions create the momentum and movement that we need to align ourselves with global um you know global initiatives to limit our environ our emissions to tie in with uh you know local gov local and national governmental initiatives to push that onto the international stage and so on so you know if we're all trying to kind of fight for fight for the right foot forward then actually we're we're also inhibiting each other yeah unified strategy that unified approach speaking from a common place gives us a playing field from which we can jump from um and which we're all playing a level play level place with an agreed baseline agenda as it were so i think for for us that's really what's so important um and what eiler wants to try and do um but it's like unification and collaboration as well and i think that's where a lot of the work that we're doing together sam comes into it is about how do we take the resources take the knowledge share that make it make it a collaborative piece that everybody can buy into because again it comes down to that that agency to engage and um drive drive that change together and feel empowered yes and i can either you know we can either spend our energies fighting one another and trying to get one-upmanship or we can spend our energies pulling together and making making this change that we need to to to happen happen we have a choice don't we and i love that collaboration over competition i love that i understand to that as absolutely right well um i'm i'm going to hand over to claire in a minute um i think what i would like to say is one of the things is really important is take time to have those meaningful conversations take time to decide where you want to go how you want to get there and please please bear in mind that each of us here anna manuela richard me claire coordinator who's who's the lovely amelia who you can't see here but she is here um um we're all here to help you do that to help you on your journey no matter where it is you want to go so do reach out to edcom do reach out to ask and ask and ask any questions that might fall out of either your meaningful conversations that you take forward or this webinar thanks ever so much sam and and interestingly just as you were wrapping up there um a comment came in from uh from hillary uh suggesting that evcom members pledge to drive sustainable initiatives forward and if they achieve esgs they are awarded a mark now this is really interesting so um hillary uh perhaps you and i could enter into an email conversation because i would be happy to explore that because i think that's an interesting um way forward because what evcom is always trying to do is find a way to drive things forward so that we're not just uh sort of a vessel if you see what i mean so that we want to be able to move things forward and what i particularly liked which came up in that very last section of the conversation was about collaboration and i think one thing that this last year has really proven is that for a highly competitive sector we have certainly all found a way to collaborate and i think that's been remarkable there's been lots of joint initiatives people working together trying to help each other out and if one good thing comes out of all of this uh messy mess um hopefully will be that realization that this competition and there is working together towards creating a an ideal that everybody can buy into um and i think that is absolutely something that evcom can get behind um so delighted to take suggestions and ideas as to how how we go about doing that um and i see a response from hillary that she's happy to engage so that's great um but on that note um i found it fascinating and richard yay go with saying no i'm very impressed um and um thank you all for taking part anna richard and manuela for our wonderful panel and sam for our very uber prepared facilitator thank you so much and if i don't see you all or speak to you all uh in the next week or so have a wonderful christmas and i for one will be um eating and drinking my body weight over the next few weeks and if i if you see you next week i'll i'll be in different shape uh thank you all for joining us and goodbye and see you all in the new year bye thank you so much thanks everyone thanks for hi bye bye