When it comes to sustainability, good intentions aren’t enough. 

For Dr Vicky Lofthouse, sustainability isn’t a checkbox or a materials swap, it’s a mindset shift. 

As a designer, educator and now founder of En-Able Sustainability, she’s spent over two decades helping companies move past the buzzwords and into the messy, meaningful reality of sustainable product design. 

In this episode of Why Design, Vicky joins Chris Whyte to explore what sustainability really looks like in practice; from balancing carbon impact with commercial constraints to understanding why context matters more than any single material choice. 

Don’t just listen. Go beyond the podcast. Join the Why Design community → teamkodu.com/events 

What You’ll Learn  

🌍 Why “make it sustainable” is the wrong brief 

⚙️ How context defines what “better” actually means 

🔁 What circular design looks like in real product teams 

🧠 Why less plastic isn’t always the right answer 

📈 How evidence beats assumptions in sustainable decision-making 

💡 The mindset shift every designer and engineer needs to make 

Memorable Quotes 

💬 “Sustainability isn’t a checklist, it’s a mindset.” 

💬 “Sometimes the right answer isn’t the obvious one.” 

💬 “Context changes everything.” 

💬 “I help companies integrate sustainability and circularity into what they do, not just what they make.” 

💬 “Progress doesn’t start with perfection; it starts with questions.” 

Resources & Links 

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube & Amazon → whydesign.club 

👥 Join the Why Design community → teamkodu.com/events 

🌿 Learn more about Enable Sustainability → EN:ABLE Sustainability | Sustainability support for purpose driven manufacturers 

👤 Connect with Dr Vicky Lofthouse → https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-vicky-lofthouse-41b4a6/ 

🎥 Watch full episodes → YouTube.com/@whydesignpod 

📸 Instagram → @whydesignxkodu 

🎵 TikTok → _whydesign 

🔗 Follow Chris Whyte → linkedin.com/in/mrchriswhyte 

📲 Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or YouTube so you never miss an episode. 

👥 Share this with a designer, engineer or founder rethinking what better really means. 

About the Episode 

Why Design is powered by Kodu, a specialist recruitment partner for the hardware and product-development industry. 

Through candid conversations with designers, engineers, and creative leaders, we explore not just what they build, but why they build it; the belief, doubt, and persistence behind meaningful innovation. 

About Kodu 

Why Design is produced by Kodu, a recruitment partner for ambitious hardware brands, design consultancies, and product start-ups. 

We help founders and teams hire top talent across industrial design, mechanical engineering, and product leadership. 

🔗 Learn more → teamkodu.com 

Vicki, welcome to the podcast.

much for having me. It's nice to be here.

Lovely to meet you too as well. Yeah, we've had a couple of conversations beforehand, but we're just going to dive into this now. So Dr. Vicky Lofthouse, Sustainability Consultant, perhaps rather than me ramble my way through an intro, if you could give us the elevator pitch, let the listeners know who you are and what you do.

Yeah, sure. Hi, yeah, I'm Vicky Lofthouse. I founded a company called Enable Sustainability and work as a sustainable innovation consultant. So I help companies, typically product manufacturers, to integrate sustainability into the products that they make and sell, but also process. I work with end-of-life processes as well. I work across a whole variety of different sectors, across consumer electronics, FMCG, medical products.

defence, all sorts of like wonderful array of different products and help them to integrate sustainability and often circularity into the work that they're doing.

Wonderful. So yeah, we're going to dive in. So on this episode, we're going to, funnily enough, kind of dive into sustainability and sustainable product development, what it really looks like in practice beyond the buzzwords. So in no particular order, we're going to explore the practical challenges and unexpected blockers companies face when trying to improve environmental impact, the role of circularity, product longevity and remanufacture.

Yeah, sure.

why less plastic isn't always the right answer and how to avoid greenwashing and greenwash traps. We're going to talk in a moment now about your career path and what you've learned about how designers and engineers can make a difference. And then we'll dive into some advice as well for people trying to break into sustainability roles, especially within our core audience, is the product development and manufacturing space.

So as I always ask my guests near the start of the show, Vicky, why design? Where did it all begin? How did your, where did your interest in design?

So I, so it started at school. I was lucky enough to do design and technology was quite across the curriculum a lot in those days when I was at school. So discovered, secondary school discovered CDT. I was like, oh, this is brilliant. I love this. was just, just was something I've never come across before and never done anything like that. I've always had kind of done the academic subjects, never done anything.

like design and just completely loved it. was really blessed to have two really great teachers in quick succession. Went on to be like the first student to do an A level in design at the school. And I did a pretty bad job of my A levels all in all, but then was extremely lucky to get into Loughborough University to do industrial design, which I decided was absolutely what I wanted to do, was my passion.

And I just loved it. I loved the degree. It just completely set me on fire. I thought it was so interesting. was just all the elements of it. just found complete. I absolutely loved my degree. And then I also discovered while I was there this thing called green design, which I was like, that is so cool. So what I really liked there was it kind of was like this additional innovation challenge that having to think about something other than.

usability, economics, the size, the fit, all that stuff, which is really complicated in itself, but then bringing in this extra sort of additional element I found really interesting. So kind of two answers in one there.

No, it's brilliant. I was going to ask where did sustainability first come into thinking, but it was one of the modules.

Yes, that was yeah, absolutely. One of the professor of our school gave us an introduction to green design. I learnt about Victor Papenek and Dorothy Mackenzie and they were kind of like the kind of my first footsteps into like the world of green design that became eco design that became sustainable design. It was very early days. So like end of the 90s, it was really early days for for practicing.

there's a sort of sustainable design and there was very, little going on actually in the real world, out in the industry. So this is how I ended up doing a PhD.

Do remember what the key pillars were, guess? And now that you're lecturing, where the key differences are to what they were teaching back in the late 90s to, know a lot more now, we?

Yeah, yeah, huge differences. So I I set up, I went to move to Loughborough University as a senior lecturer, first of all, lecturer, then senior lecturer, back in about 2003. And we set up a module on sustainable design then, working with another colleague, Eddie Norman, we set up this module, which was, I think, one of the first of its kind. So

Certainly when I was a student, it was probably one lecture and I think we wrote an essay on some stuff. It's amazing it inspired me as much as it did, but it obviously did. But now they get a huge amount of input. have input, in Loughborough, students get input across all three years. There's an elective module in the third year. for students who are interested, and I know many are because I get contacted by students every year who are like, how do I do this? How can I get into this?

this world, there is an awful lot more that they're given and actually we're really only limited by the time available which is always a bit of a challenge kind of fitting in different, all the different topics and different subjects without overloading the student groups. So yeah, the difference is phenomenally different and I know that it's now talked across many, many more design-based universities certainly in the UK and in Europe and beyond.

Yeah, massively.

Wonderful. And so going back to your time then as a student, obviously you came out of Loughborough and then looks like you did a couple of years in industrial design as a consultancy.

I did, yeah, yeah, I worked for a small consultancy for a couple of years and it just wasn't really kind of like doing quite considering how I was kind of so passionate and it also wasn't quite kind of taking what I wanted to do. It was also a really difficult time. Most of us graduating that year, we weren't expecting to get jobs. The market was dreadful. It was a really, really bad time for design. We actually all did get jobs and we all went on to most of us.

either stayed in design or kind of retrained and moved into marketing engineering. It's quite a, you know, is it one of those degrees, I think, where you can actually go off into different directions. So after a couple of years, I was a bit disillusioned and kind of decided I was going to go traveling and kind of give it all up. And I, in the process of doing that, I had something, a job advert at Cranford University came up.

And I was like, okay, that looks interesting. It was working with Electrolux to do an eco design project. And I was like, that is literally what I've always wanted to do. That's amazing. I need to go for that. So I went along and I had a chat with them and I was off of the job, which was brilliant. What I didn't realize it was actually in a research position for a PhD studentship. So I was kind of my jaw hit the floor and I kind of drove home going, what the hell am I doing?

I would never have put myself in that sort of place, the sort of person that would be doing a PhD. Although I've kind of always worked hard at school and was relatively academic, I certainly wasn't like super academic. So yeah, it was a real massive pivotal moment in my life and completely unexpected, but driven by this desire to work with Electrodux to develop, they wanted to develop the world's most environmentally friendly cooker. That was their kind of their desire at the time.

and I consequently sponsored two PhD studentships of which I got one of them. yeah, really, really pivotal and very surprising time that took a little while to get my head around. But there we go.

Wow. So, yeah, you kind of, you mentioned on your LinkedIn profile you fell into a PhD, but yeah, you kind of tripped over it by a, yeah, the advert clearly didn't mention that it was a PhD research position, I guess. Yeah.

Absolutely.

Well no, but I think it was probably my lack of knowledge about academia because I just wasn't my area at all and it was, I think it was called a research associate position and I was like, okay that sounds great and I'd like to do a bit of research, I've always been interested in research and yeah it wasn't more than that.

Okay, yeah.

Had it had a PhD kind of prominently in there, do you think you might have had second thoughts about applying?

Do know, that's a really good question. I yeah, I probably would have. I'm not sure. I certainly didn't feel like somebody who was PhD material or would do a PhD. It really wasn't something that I ever thought about in my mind. Yeah, I probably wouldn't have gone that way. Yeah, good question.

So we're going to skip into the advice bit here, but I think it's relevant to your journey studying the PhD. would you think about PhDs from the outside looking in? There are a lot of work. It's a lot of study, lots of coursework. You've got to put your thesis together. Having never thought you'd do one to then going through it, do you think there are any kind of

Mm.

Mm.

misconceptions or things that people should kind of know that might actually change their mind about taking.

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed it, I have to say. I mean, it was extremely hard work, but I did really enjoy it. I'm a naturally very curious person. And I think if you are, if you come from a place of curiosity, a PhD is actually a really good fit because that's really what it is. It's about being, I mean, I did mine within design. So it's about being curious about people, the way they interact with stuff. I was looking at my whole focus area was...

integrating industrial, sorry, integrating eco design into industrial design practice. So it was very much taking my industrial design background and working with industrial designers to try and understand how to get them to think and not just think, but like do sustainable design within their practice and the challenges that that's, you know, understanding the challenges and trying to kind of work their way around them. So, so yeah, it was a real, it wasn't, it wasn't a practice led PhD. It was a

was a normal theory based PhD, but it was very practical. I did a lot of talking to people and it's kind of like, you know, a lot of our students really enjoy the kind of research element of the projects that we set. And actually it's just an extension of that really, but with some serious writing. So you do have to get to grips with the writing as well, because I've subsequently supervised probably about 12 PhD students and

The ones with a design background are probably the hardest to get to commit pen to paper. They still do a great job in the end, but yeah. So I really enjoyed it. I finished my PhD very much a researcher. I still really enjoy research. It's kind of a lot of what I do within my business. It's what I've always really enjoyed. And it's really just about finding out new stuff and always learning. I really love that.

Wonderful. So where did the, you you finished the research, finished your PhD with Electrolux, where did it take you then? Was it straight back into Loughborough or did you do something else?

Yeah. So I did my PhD at Cranfield and it was a really difficult time in some ways because I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with companies and help them to integrate sustainability like I had done with Electrodux. It was very much what I wanted to do like career wise. But there really wasn't very much going on in the UK at all. Electrodux were doing a little bit, obviously they were doing a bit.

I think Hotpoint were doing a little bit. There was a few little bits here and there, but there wasn't very much. There was quite a lot of work going on in the Netherlands, but actually for me at the time, it wasn't a really appropriate move to go to the Netherlands. That wasn't really the path I was looking for. So it was quite challenging because the thing I really wanted to do, I couldn't do very easily. So I ended up going into academia. We got some funding for a research project that I led the funding for, and then we...

worked on that for a couple of years and did a couple of subsequent research projects which I did really enjoy and I learnt a lot. So I did because I did really have that passion for research as well I kind of continued in that area but it was there was a kind of a bit of a lag between like where where I was with the research because it's generally so much further ahead than where actual practice is so it was quite challenging in that respect and probably explains why it's taken me so long to

kind of extract myself from academia to then do the business full time. the, it's probably fair to say along the way, kind of opportunities cropped up with various different companies who I did bits of consultancy work for, sort of more, really much more as a side hustle, really kind of helping them along the way. But it certainly, I didn't feel there was enough work out there for certainly anything sustained. So it was, yeah, it was.

I was waiting really for industry to catch up with the stuff I really wanted to be doing.

Yeah, without wanting to sound too cheesy, but it sounds like it's much more of a sustainable career and sustainability these days than when you were getting there, getting going.

Definitely. Yeah, definitely. mean, you know, there's this back in those days, the we directive had just hadn't even been launched, actually. So there wasn't even any eco legislation that sort of came a little bit later. And we thought that might bring some sort of like momentum. But really, it just meant that people paid it off. Really, they didn't they didn't really change the way that people design their products. So it has been quite slow, has been quite slow. And

really my way of dealing with that was to kind of make sure I was doing interesting research that was situated within sustainability, but also supporting companies I've always worked with. So all my research projects have always been with companies who wanted to make change and invest. So did a really big research project with Boots, which was really interesting, all in refillable packaging, which wasn't even a thing at the time. So yeah, just some really interesting work that was kind of like.

keep moving it forward, but just not actually in that kind of consultancy space.

Yeah, I love those innovations. I've been working with a company called Meadow based over in Sweden, but they've got R &D sites in and around London. they're excited. I use the refillable like soap bottles, you know, you can buy, but you always end up with a bit of plastic and the soap goes everywhere. What Meadow have done is they've put it into tin cans. So you have you have one dispenser that you have to use to open the can.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, yeah.

So you can't access it any other way. They've crimped the top so it doesn't look or feel like a drinks can because that was a bit of a nightmare for the legal boffins over at Unilever, etc. to get their heads around. How can we put something in a can because someone's going to drink it? And it's mess, you know, it's mess free. Everyone knows what they're doing with cans. everything gets recycled and it's a really neat solution. So I love seeing that kind of thing as well.

nice yeah

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of those sorts of innovations. So I do, I currently have a monthly newsletter and I always try to, I don't try, I do, I always collate four different sustainable innovations to share. Cause I just think those sorts of things are so inspiring for people. It's great to see that it's doable and that people can, know, that there are solutions and then who's working in the field. So yeah, great example.

Absolutely. So where, I may forget at the end of this recording, where can people access your newsletter? Is it on your LinkedIn? Can they sign up there?

Yes, so I can certainly give, I'll send you the link for my newsletter and I'm also very like prominent on LinkedIn so you can always connect with me on LinkedIn. Yeah, that'd be great.

I'm Wilson.

Yeah, great. I'll pop it in the show notes. OK, back to your journey then. you've been lecturing for 20 years or so now, by the looks of it. But also you're running your own sustainability consulting now. You mentioned that you're picking up bits and bobs along the way. How did those early kind of projects come about?

about a thousand years, something like that, yeah. Something coming up for that.

chance encounters or...

Yeah, so quite, it's interesting. It's hard to think. I think quite often people, people I knew, I knew people who knew people. So also I suppose when I was doing the PhD, I was interviewing people for and getting them to, so I created something called information inspiration, which was just a tool for designers. And I needed to then test it with people. So I was working with, I kind of just like went to the library and printed off a big long list of design consultants and rang them all.

Some said yes and some said no. So that was kind of like a really weird period of cold calling people. I ended up getting lots of people signed up. And so I made lots of connections that way. And then I think that's kind of it came from. of I've met people and then they were like, we need to do this thing. Are you interested? And can you help with that? So it was through a combination of referrals and just kind of connections that I've made with people through networking.

Yeah, good old fashioned kind of research and cold call and it's, yeah, but I'm guessing you weren't necessarily selling or pitching anything, were you? Saying this is what I'm doing. I'm looking for people to get involved. There's no strings attached. And then it's like, you're just demonstrating. Everyone loves a free, but you you're demonstrating your expertise there. And if you speak to enough people, you know, and leave a positive impression, know, generally speaking, good things will happen at some point. So wonderful.

yeah no yeah yeah they were all freebies everyone loves a freebie

again.

Yeah, yes exactly, yes.

So today your focus is on obviously sustainability. You're still at Tringo U or is it mainly the consultants? Yeah, OK. Full time. Yeah.

I will be lecturing until September of this year and then I'm going all in. So I'm still going back and doing a little bit I think but yeah my primary focus will be on the company and yeah building my client base and working with more people helping them to do great stuff. So it's very exciting.

exciting times. this by the time this episode goes out, then you'll be full time with Enable. what was the do you remember? Was there like a pivotal moment where you decided, right, this is the day that I'm just going all in on this?

Yes.

Yeah, yes there was. So about four years ago, kind of, it's never tidy, it's never clean, it's always a bit messy, isn't it? So I had one of those three toys out of the pan moments and was like, I need to leave, I've had enough, I need to do what I wanna do. And then kind of got talked down a bit and was like, right, we'll go two days a week, that's fine. So I kind of dialed down the academic world and kind of had.

space then to build the business. So I've been doing that for four years. And then last November, I was at an event, is kind of like business development event run by a woman called Dawn Owen. It's the High Vibe Live. It's fantastic event. Went along to that and spent the entire day having a kind of internal mini meltdown as to what was I doing with my life. And then kind of left there. Next morning I was walking the dog and was like, yeah, I need to leave.

That's it. It's decision made. time to leave, time to do, like really go in on the business and just go for it. So quite a distinctive day and I blame the dog really. So it was all his fault. But yeah, these things always take a bit of brewing, I think. And then like, you you know when it's right and it's definitely right. It's a good decision.

Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah, my moment was, mean, I'd been thinking about setting up my business for probably three or four years before I actually, because it's similar to you, before I actually kind of took the plunge. Because, you know, I loved the environment that I worked in, the people, you know, spent 10 and half years there. was, in end, was, you know, made some lifelong friends there. But I just, you know, was hungry for something more. I knew there was different ways of doing things that I wanted to, the freedom to make my own.

Mm.

Yeah.

Mm.

decisions and take risks and provide great value. But the pivotal moment for me was when I was running an event with Elvie down in Bristol and we had a great turnout of industry leaders turn up and we were sharing insights on user-centered design, inclusive design led by Tom Malloy. He was on the podcast way back when we first started it. So thank you, Tom, for...

Okay.

for being my guinea pig on this, yeah, so it's such a fantastic event and the feedback we have was wonderful. I just remember, you know, driving back with a big grin on my face because I thoroughly enjoyed it. And then the next couple of days people come say, hey, Chris, that was great. When you do the next one. And it just dawned on me. think I didn't want to do another one for for that company. You know that if I was going to because if I was going to do this, I was going to.

you

Mm. Yeah.

I wanted to build a business around community and values. And I couldn't keep doing that for someone else and then go and start. that was my kind of moment of, not necessarily throw my toys out of the pram, but it was that light bulb moment of epiphany. That's it. So, wonderful. Well, thank you for sharing that. So obviously by the time this comes out, you're full in consultant mode.

Yeah.

Epiphany.

Let's talk about the real world complexity of sustainable design and let's dive into sustainability. as hopefully you'll notice, it's not a one size fits all. And it's what's right for that business and also the context around it. but what kind of companies...

Yeah.

Yes, yes definitely.

you

Yeah.

you working with or have been working with through Enable.

So I work with a whole variety of companies across loads of different sectors. So really the kind of the entry point is that they've recognized that sustainability is important and they want to, either they want to do something or they want some help to do more stuff. And that's where I come in. So I'm not really in the business of convincing people it's important. I say that, I've got another little initiative I'm about to launch, which is actually convincing people it's important.

Normally my focus is on working with people who already get it and they're just a bit swamped. they kind of, either, they've got all these ideas and they don't know where to start or they can see that it's really important for the business. There's a lot of, they can see the risks. There's a lady I'm working with at the moment who's not a product person. She's not a design person at all, but she's totally like gets the risk involved with not engaging with sustainability.

So that's why she's kind of interested in working with me talking to me because from her kind of like more like organizational management perspective, she's like, this is a risk to our business. We need to know more. We need to know what we're doing. We need some help. So it's that through to working with sustainability managers who have so much to do. There's maybe them and maybe they've got someone else that they employ now and it's usually quite a small.

It's always a smaller team than they need. So yeah, that's the sort of people I often work with.

foot and what are some of the kind of the common misconceptions that companies or your clients have when it about what it takes to you know in that quotes go green.

So the focus I pretty much always have is on product, it's on the product area. So there's lots of people who focus on scope one and scope two, which is kind of like greening the business. So that would be like putting solar panels on your roof and reducing water, reducing waste, that sort of thing. That is something that many of my clients think about. It's not an area I explicitly help them with. So often the preconceptions tend to be around that scope one and scope two area.

because that's more your kind of like business level concerns. Scope three type of work that we look at, is, so when I talk about scope three, I'm talking about the carbon, it's all measured in carbon equivalent. So it's kind of, we're trying to, the whole point is to try and reduce the amount of carbon that your business is creating. And it might be through like the infrastructure of the business, or it might be through the products that you create.

If you're looking at the products, it's usually everything that you're looking at because the products are the most difficult bit. So typically the companies I work with already kind of done that first bit and then they're kind of going actually, yeah, right. What can we do with the products that we've got? So it might be. So that's kind of not quite answering your question, but it's kind of setting it within the context of the sort of the way that we work. think a common the common thing that happens to me all the time is that

clients come to me asking for one thing and it's not quite the right thing. So you have to kind of quite carefully work out how to frame it so that it like, prove them wrong without annoying them and show them the right direction. All in one nice little friendly package. Because sometimes they kind of, they've latched onto something that they think is going to be the solution, but it's not evidence-based. So they haven't actually underpinned that with any sort of...

evaluation to actually work out what is going to make a bigger difference. So that's in terms of misconceptions, that probably my kind of the key thing I find when I I've had that with three or four of the clients that I've worked with quite recently. And it's it's kind of like it's quite heartening really, because it means that they've they've made the effort, they've worked out that something needs to be done. They think it's this they've kind of done some sort of thinking about that. I can help there by coming in and sort of

helping to do proper assessments to work out actually what you really need to be focusing is on this and if you focus on this you'll have a much bigger impact. It's probably going to be easier, it might save you more money than actually this thing that you were thinking was going to be really important it's maybe a bit more spurious. So that's quite a common problem.

Yeah, I think that the obvious one is plastic, isn't it? It's vilified in the media. from the conversations I've had, quite often you think the obvious route is to take plastic out of the product. But what do you replace it with? And if it's replaced it with recycled plastic, is it as durable? Because there's an argument to say, if you build something to last a lifetime,

you

Thank

Mmm.

rather than having to recycle it you know is it it gonna yeah but plastics really handy.

Yeah. Plastic is complex. It is really handy and that's why it's so complex. from, do have a lot of clients who actually an entry point often with clients is packaging for me. It's quite often it's front facing, customer facing. They're kind of like, God, we need to our packaging out. Can we help? So obviously in terms of packaging, removing single use plastic from packaging is...

driven by legislation now, there's financial penalties for not doing. there's a lot of work that I do that involves trying to remove plastic from packaging. And I think that's a very, different thing to when we consider plastic and the durable goods. think that it's a very, different purpose that we're using the material for. And there's lots of examples of where single use plastic is used like really irresponsibly and quite stupidly really. It's just waste. It's costing lots of money for no purpose.

So there's a big piece of work there in terms of trying to remove plastics from packaging specifically, but it's not without its challenges. It's massively difficult because plastic's really good at what it does. It's really light. It usually comes up better from a carbon perspective because it's like you only need a tiny bit of it to do the, you know, protect it, move it, print it, communicate, do all the things. And...

if you switch that out for paper, paperboard, it's already heavier. immediately there's these challenges. And I think, as you said at the beginning, context is absolutely critical. I would, with every client I work with, understanding their context and designing for their context is absolutely key. So I did some work with a company who make airline meals.

you

So they're these things. The context there is the fact that they ultimately, it doesn't really matter what you make it out of, as light as possible is the most important thing because it's flying backwards and forwards across the world all the time. And there's hundreds of them, thousands of them. really, yeah, absolutely. The context is super, super important, yeah, plastic does really, it's a really interesting one. think from a consumer point of view, people hate it. They think it's like.

Dreadful from a design point of view. We know that actually it's extremely good at doing a lot of things really well, and it's really cheap and It won't continue to be really cheap because there are kind of There are supply chain Costs that they're going to come in it's going to become more expensive. So actually if we can we can build in more secular ways of bringing plastic back

not having it in this sort of take, use, dispose kind of area. So moving it out of that single use place, which is the place where the biggest focus in terms of removing plastic is in single use. But then also, you know, within more durable product design, looking at like lightweighting and clever, know, clever ways of using less plastic, using things such as SLA to create things so we can create more.

clever web-based sort of webbed materials. And there's some really interesting work that can be done in that respect to sort of help to mitigate the overuse of plastic.

Yeah, have you seen the work that like Knopfler and Kelpie and Sway are doing around kind of films like seaweed based films?

Yeah. Yes.

Yeah, there's some really interesting innovations in terms of plastics and different types of bioplastics and different ways that I'm not even going to get into bioplastics, but they're very complicated. There's my one takeaway that I would give you on bioplastics, they're very complicated and it's definitely not a one word answer, but there's still some really, really interesting innovation going on and if it's applied in the right context and used in the right place, because there's some really interesting.

Yeah.

opportunities I think for solving different problems.

It's a really interesting topic, isn't it? Because when you think about, you know, it's super complex because on the one hand, you've got the public perception like plastic is bad, but the actual reality is, know, that's usually out of context. Paper isn't necessarily a better use because it gets soggy and it weighs more than the equivalent plastic, but then it tends to get recycled. There's all these trade-offs kind of and kind of counter arguments, isn't there? And then when you look at

Mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

like the exciting innovations in, like I've just mentioned with Notplow and Kelpie and Swate, in terms of what they're doing. That's exciting, but actually right now it's probably a lot more carbon damaging than kind of creating the equivalent plastic because it's still in R &D. It's still in, know, they're not economies of scale just yet. So probably in future.

Yeah, I think the ones that are coming from bio, like the sort of seaweed based, think they'll be absorbing carbon as they grow. that I think that there's some that's really interesting. And there's some pretty cool stuff in terms of like drop in plastics to create bio based alternatives to polyprop and PET. And actually, one of the things that's been very good, like really interesting to see is that as the legislation was landing, like a year or two ago,

Yeah.

the scale of innovation in terms of like different types of plastics and different plastic innovations has gone through the roof. So actually we've gone from a place of like, yeah, there's polyprop and PET and blah, blah, and really got much else to this, like they are all in development, as you say, they're still coming through the progression of the development phases, but there's some really interesting materials emerging that we just haven't had the opportunity to.

Yeah.

to use before. So in that respect, the legislation has driven quite a lot of innovation.

Yeah, exciting times. Can you share a project or two where kind of, you know, small unexpected changes? Because you mentioned that often the clients come to you and they have an idea, but it's not actually the right path. So, you know, where a small unexpected change from either side has had a big impact.

and

So the one that always jumps to mind is that I had a client who came to me and they wanted to, they wanted compostable packaging. was what they, that's what they wanted. And I was kind of like, right, okay. And actually it's this company who sells to an airline, to the airline industry, because actually you need to know the context. And they were like, yeah, we want to do compostable packaging, which from their point of view, it made a lot of sense because they were like, well, all the food is composted. We want to compost the packaging.

But the trouble was that the legislation around all of this is extremely tight, extremely complicated, and it would have required legislative change, which takes forever. It's really, really slow. Also, a lot of waste that is flown through the air has to be incinerated. That's legal requirement because of things like mad cow's disease. There's really tight restrictions on organic matter that's flown around the world.

many, many routes it has to be incinerated at the end. So actually by creating compostable packaging, they were kind of like taking on the whole, they were taking on the world and actually not necessarily solving the right problem. So actually what really this is where I wait, I actually, so I, for this company, I ended up doing a little kind of carbon analysis to show them to actually, that for every gram that they saved, they would be saving this much carbon over this many flights.

So, kind of like changed the way that the industry were thinking about it. So, it was actually picked up by the, ASF, which is the aviation. I can't remember the, I can't remember the full name, but the ASF took it up and, so that companies could actually work out the carbon impact of flying food packaging around the world. so that was kind of like, we sort of started off with compostable packaging and ended up with like, basically make it lightweight.

No way.

actually ideally if you know it's going to be incinerated so give it a good color calorific value when you burn it so in that respect you go well that's plastic because it's super light and it will be and it will bring back some value when it's burned which is very quite controversial because obviously that's not the way it's all going so again it's about understanding the context and often these things you know I'm giving

Yeah, because I'm...

I'm very much short-cutting today when we're chatting and it isn't that straightforward quite often certainly when I'm writing reports it's kind like you need to consider this this and this and actually we've talked about we're going to talk about greenwashing a bit but these things are really important you need to have a really clear understanding of what you're promising and what the expectation is and what the savings are and you need to be very open about what you're talking about but that doesn't mean you always have to comply with like

the general wisdom, which is not necessarily wisdom, it's more kind of hearsay and chit chat and follow on Google. So there was a bit of a challenge because obviously you then got to sell it to the client and to the customer. having a really kind of clear rationale as to why you've chosen to go down the route you've chosen, that may not necessarily but be what the general public expect is really important. And that's where these sort of analysis tools can be really helpful because they can help to

Yeah.

They provide evidence and there's challenges in that as well, but they provide a degree of evidence to support the decisions that you've made.

Yeah and I'm guessing in that context, having a lighter weight packaging means that it costs less to transport, costs less to actually move the planes, I'll use less fuel potentially, so you can attribute a commercial.

Yeah, exactly. It's using less aviation fuel, is, yeah, absolutely. And when you've got, I don't know, 500 seats on board and everyone's got a dinner, that's fine. There's probably a thousand dinners on board. And for every point of one of a gram you can save, you're saving aviation fuel, which in terms of, if we're looking at sustainability, the plastics are relevant. The aviation fuel is by far the biggest issue. So it's about kind of those trade-offs and going, well, actually sometimes some things are more important than others.

yeah.

and by kind of having the assessments that you can do give you some numbers which they're never accurate but they are kind of like they help to give you proportion like proportionate understanding of where the impact lies and then you can address the things that really matter. So there's no point in addressing something that's come up as really small and really insignificant. It might be easy but it's not going to lead to any benefits. Sometimes though those things can lead to kind of consumer facing benefits or more brand benefits.

You know, it's complicated, but having that kind of like open mind is really important.

Yeah, massively. Now, it's really interesting to say that kind of brings us on nicely to circular economy. That's something that you hear kind of, I don't want to say a buzzword, but it gets used a lot in design. So what exactly does circular economy mean in the context of product development for those that aren't familiar with it?

Yeah. Yeah, so in the context of product development, it typically means trying to keep resources, which might be in the form of components or materials, in use for as long as possible. So that might be, it can be approached in lots of different ways. So it might be to do with modularity. So for example, like the framework laptops, really nice example of this. So they've created a

laptop which allows you you can build it for the the spec that you need. It's particularly suited for large companies who have like I don't know maybe like a bank of 500 laptops that they deliver out to various people and they can adapt it accordingly for the type of roles that people have. So that's very much taking on a modular approach so that you can then bring things back and use them in different places and you kind of run things up. It's not like with a typical laptop where it reach the end of its life cycle and

hopefully be recycled at the very least. But it's really about recognizing that recycling is like the last resort really. We all think recycling is a really good thing and everyone's quite proud of they do. But actually, if we can keep things in use for longer, that's much, better than recycling. other ways of integrating sex economy would be to, so if you, for example, have a service-based industry, then you can, and you're

you're owning your products, then they come back to you. You can strip them down. You can reuse modules. can, if you've got plastics that are being aged over time, then they can be ground down and refed back into your own material batches. So there's all sorts of things you can do in terms of like recouping and reusing components, but also materials, substructures as well.

But all of that would come under the secular economy.

Are there any particular design strategies you can think of that work well to extend product life, like you said, to keep it out of recycling? Anything that you've seen that will work well?

Yeah, so there's loads of different ways in which that can happen. there's obviously there's plenty of companies who design for long life. So I, for example, have Global Knives, which I've had since I got married 20 something years ago and will probably have till the day I die because they don't change. They just sit there and they're brilliant and they're very well designed for durability and longevity. And so there are like lots of examples of products out there that are designed to have a longer life.

They're usually higher end, they're cost-able, people have to invest in that lifetime, but once you've invested, you keep them. There's products like Triptrap, a chair that starts off as a of a baby seat and ends up being an adult seat later on in life, which is a beautiful piece of furniture design that, I mean, that's been around for years, like 25 years probably, and the idea is that it grows with your family. There's all sorts of examples of

products that are designed to last a really, really long time. There's also strategies that you can employ when you're designing things in terms of thinking about how people engage with the product. is it something that they emotionally bond with so that they want to keep it for a long time? They like the fact it's a little bit scuffed and like the pen knife that's been in your family for like, it's your granddad's and it's your dad's and that's yours.

And those sorts of things, that kind of emotional bonding, they are elements that you can design into products. So, yeah, there's loads of different, like really interesting strategies that you can think of both in terms of the way that consumers interact with products, the way that they relate to the products that they've got. And also, like thinking about things about how easily things are upgraded, how in terms of like your tech, whether...

your iPad, for example, can be. Is it going to become technologically obsolete or can it be upgraded? Yeah, of it could be upgraded. It's like a big glass screen with a load of tech inside of it. There's no reason why it shouldn't be. It doesn't need to be like the next generation. So there's a whole bunch of that sort of thing that you can think about, but also things like secondhand markets, like refurbished markets.

you

My Dell computer is refurbished. It's brilliant. It doesn't look like anybody's ever touched it. But there's a whole kind of raft of companies that now are set up to take tech back, sort it out, and then resell it. So again, all of that material, every time you buy a product, every time you choose to buy a product that's being refurbished, you are saving a lot of resource. And actually, for companies who are measuring their carbon,

which will become more and more important for all companies. But if you are measuring your carbon, if you're buying refurbished equipment, that's going to reduce your scope to impact because you're having less impact in your business. there's all sorts of, yeah, loads and loads of different kind of strategies from a design point of view and why you would engage with them. I could go on for that for hours.

That's interesting.

Yeah I was sitting on a refurbished Herman Miller chair which I wish I'd invested in a few years ago because the old one was giving me back grief but yeah this is great you'd never know.

Yeah, but Herman Miller are a fantastic example that they do. I mean, they probably are one of the longest standing examples I've used to kind of illustrate good practice to people because they so like for as long as I've known, they've used green energy across all their factories. They manufacture like in real kind of local hubs. They have really kind of excellent kind of disassembly and remanufacturing and

all these kind of elements built into the design of their chairs. They're an amazing company. good chair. I also have one. I love it.

Yeah. Yes, it's really, really I can't remember the name of it, but yeah, I've I try and stand as much as I can now because it's better for your health, isn't it? But when you sit down, you want something that's not going to ruin your back. So it's awesome. Brilliant. Well, let's let's talk about, you know, building a career than in sustainable innovation. You you've taught thousands of students. You've mentioned you've kind of.

It's true.

Mm.

supervised a dozen or so PhDs as well. I probably fair to say you're well placed to advise people who want to follow a similar path. For someone interested in working in the intersection of design and sustainability, it might be a bit of a big question, but where should they start?

Yeah.

It's a question I get every single year and because I have taught on this elective final year module for the years and I get sort of like 40 to 80 students coming through and a good proportion of them are like, this is really cool, do I do more? And I would say up until about five years ago, it was a really difficult question to answer and I always felt like...

It's really difficult because I can't really advise you because there is not very much out there. And now it's completely different. now I would say to people, then there's lots of lots of different things. If you've learned about sustainability at university and it's something you know about, take confidence in the fact that you probably know more than the people who are trying to recruit you or the companies that you're going to go into. And actually having the confidence to be the expert in the room is a really

great thing. So I attended a Design Declares event over the summer and spoke to quite a lot of different students. They weren't students, they were graduates and they were really keen and really kind of interested in sustainability but kind of struggling to find their way a little bit. My kind of message to them was just being more brave and be more annoying. So like be that conscious in the room because actually if you can get into a design role then you you know you've

you've been taken on because you've got the skills for the job, but that doesn't mean that we should, the job doesn't evolve over time and that the design industry doesn't need to evolve. And so I think there's a lot of talk about that at the moment. If they aren't in design declares, I'd definitely advise them to sign up for that. It's a really good initiative that kind of helps kind of...

back here and what you think is important. And they run events where you can go along and speak to like-minded people. So that's a really good place to start. I would absolutely connect with anybody interesting, everybody interesting on LinkedIn. I think it's a really good platform for just finding really interesting people who are doing stuff within sustainability. And there's loads of free training out there if you didn't do much in terms of sustainability.

at college or uni and you want to know more, then there's some really great all sorts of kind of programs out there from ones that are offered by Oxford and Cambridge that kind of like if you're embedded in a company and you want to go and learn more, they're really good programs if you're in that sort of position. Or there's things like the acts of climate school, which are great for upskilling a large kind of audience of people. There's a cost involved to all of those. But then there's if you can, you know, like

YouTube and LinkedIn and like there's all sorts of like training you can learn all sorts There's loads of free events out there as well And yeah get into networks that talk about these sort of things and just kind of connect with people I think I think to get into anything that you want to do Connect connection is is key and as you said earlier if you can connect with people and you make a good impression and you show that you're Interested and knowledgeable then you know opportunities will happen

There's also actually kind of, yeah, kind of an obvious thing as well. Look at people's sustainability reports. You know, if they sound a bit flaky, because there's a few out there that do, then they're probably the ones to be following up. But there's lots of companies who doing loads more in terms of sustainability now. And if their sustainability initiatives sound really interesting, then reach out to them. They're good companies to be working for. So, yeah, all of that.

Networking is key.

Absolutely. there any any tools or platforms that people should be kind of being clued up on, know, to give them an edge? You know, I'm just thinking, you know, life cycle assessments, know, LCAs or any kind of platforms that give you that kind of data. Is it advantageous to be clued up in that area?

you

I think if you're that kind of person, then it could be. wouldn't go anywhere near LCA's personally. think from a design point of view, the outputs of an LCA are great, but doing them could take forever and they're really hard work. Carbon assessment is interesting. It's a good tool to have. can quite relatively quickly calculate

enough. So I said they're not particularly like they're not necessarily that accurate, but you can actually you can calculate quickly enough to work out where your hotspots are, where the opportunities are. So carbon analysis can be a really useful tool to have. And that's the sort of thing that we do offer training through. So that is an opportunity. In terms of this free tools, so there's a tool on my website that's called the Design Abacus, which is a

something I teach to students and it's a, I've used it with all sorts of people like across from like from, you know, underground to postground clients. And it's a really kind of useful sort of better than worse than analysis tool that you can use on any project you're working on, it's free. I adapted it from another organization probably about 25 years ago. And it's like a really pared down version of it. And that's kind of interesting.

So there's bits and pieces that you need. I think understanding the language of sustainability is quite important. I think it's becoming more complex. So understanding what net zero means and what that means for companies and what that means for design a bit. in terms of people who are working in product, actually net zero is quite a big deal because

The scope three bit, is where the product sits, is the hardest bit. Everybody recognizes it's generally about 80 % of the impact of any company and not the hardest thing to deal with because it's usually very much outside of your control. So I work with Triton Showers at the moment and they're very interested in reducing the impact of the showers that they create. And we're doing a lot of work in terms of looking at what that impact is and how you can reduce that, whether through different...

different ways that can people shower and using showers less, how you can look at remanufacturing and bringing all that stuff back in. there's lots of different ways in which product designers can get involved with and have an impact in reducing the sustainability impact. But I think having a broad awareness and giving it a go would be my tips.

I think going back to people who wanting to get into it as a career, doing some like private projects and kind of picking something and going, let's see what we can come up with. Let's do some stuff. So actually by doing that, you're learning quite quickly what works and what doesn't. And it won't be obviously within that kind of like real life challenges. Like we find it, for example, like working with the supply chain that's manufacturing and supply chain relationships can actually be a real.

will challenge. that's again slightly different, but as a kind of stepping stone, that could be really, really useful as a way to get your foot in the door.

Yeah, massively. Once you've done that project as well, kind of break it into into kind of easily digestible posts and publicize on LinkedIn, you know, get kind of share it with your network and create a conversation. wonderful. Well, we're rapidly approaching the end of the of our time here. But yeah, I think a lot of people come on and well, we're a full hour. But yeah, it's flown by. So I've really enjoyed it. But

Exactly. Yes, definitely.

You

You

You know, we're rapidly. So what's what's most exciting you about your work right now? And what are you most excited about? Kind of looking forward for the next 12 months. Fairly obvious one, given that you're about to go full time in the business, but.

Yeah, it all excites me. I love it. think it's a really exciting time. There's a lot to do and my biggest push at the moment is to connect with people who benefit from my expertise to help them to move stuff forward. I find it really interesting working at those nitty-gritty challenges and recognising there's a massive difference between a student project and a

project that's got like, like all these different protagonists and different stakeholders and, and actually there's money involved and everyone has a bit of an issue about it. So I really liked that kind of like working in the, working in the messy bit and helping find a way through where it was actually, and actually then seeing these things come to fruition where, whereby like companies then turn around and go, God, we saved like 15 tons of carbon. Well, that's amazing. And actually kind of like,

also sharing that message and understanding actually 15 tons of carbon it's a lot, a ton of carbons like the equivalent of Lambsent, John O'Groats, I can remember three or five times something like that, remember which but so actually it's a lot, it's a lot of impact so if you can kind of, if you can engage people and they start to see difference then actually it's very interesting how quickly

like a little packaging project turns into, oh, I want to look at this, I want to look at this. People get the book for it. They can see they're saving money. They can see that they're de-risking the business. They kind of work out, actually, oh, OK, so this is an area we could work in. This is an area we can work in. And I think also, the thing I'm probably learning myself is that the kind of the

drivers within the business and not necessarily who you think they're going to be. So I work a lot with a lot of sustainability managers and they are the natural drivers. As I said, I mentioned this lady earlier who I'm working with and like she's in ops and has kind of come at it from a completely different perspective but gone actually, yeah, this is important. So I think it's really heartening that there's a lot more appetite and a lot of kind of engagement coming from all sorts of places and yeah.

Hopefully, looking for a good future.

awesome. Now it's really exciting and finally any books or podcasts that you'd recommend either related to sustainability or just personal interest, got a dealer's choice there.

Well, actually I'm dreadful. only, I'll probably say apart from my own podcast, I only actually listen to one podcast. And that's very specifically to business development for people like myself. So that's the High Vibe. Yeah, the High Vibe Hub. High Vibe, High Vibe Live. it's called, have to tell you. I might have to edit this at the end. It's, I'm going to get into so much trouble for getting that wrong.

interested though what sorry

High vibe live. High vibe live. That's a math full, isn't it?

We can edit that. We've even got...

We might need to edit this. Give me one sec. I'll find it for you. It's called, it's called the High Vibe, sorry, I'm going to try again. So it's the High Vibe Tribe podcast and it's aimed at women developing businesses and getting their asses kicked by Dawn Owen, who's the coach who runs it. It is X rated, I think, so might not be appropriate for your audience, but it's...

Amazing.

Some of the best things are, yeah.

It's very good and I find it very, it's a lot of thought work goes in behind the work she does and yeah, keeps me on the straight and narrow, which is good.

made it easy for people to recommend the podcast. High Vibe Tribe podcast. It's a tongue twister, isn't it?

Yes, it's great when you trip over it. But yeah, I don't listen to many. I kind of go through phases like if I'm doing a project, did a few projects on food a couple of years ago and I just was listening to all these podcasts on like regenerative farming and all this stuff. But yes, I kind of dip it in now. But that's what I think is actually more like listen to. Yes, it is.

That's your go to. I love that because, you know, we have a lot of design consultants and freelancers that listen to the show and, know, and, you know, most of job is sales, isn't it? Whether you define it as sales or define it as networking, know, whatever it is, you're constantly pitching or discovering kind of what problems you might be told to solve. listening to podcasts like that, I listen to there's one called the 30 minutes to Presidents Club.

Yeah.

Yeah.

which is a very American sales podcast, it's it gets into the weeds. It's very granular on kind of tactics on business development. And then there's a bunch around kind of social marketing and stuff that I listen to as well as the design stuff. So it's just.

Okay. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, there's obviously a diary of a CEO. I think everybody listens to that every now and again. I do dip into that.

Yeah. Wonderful. Well, I'll make sure that we get that at the right order that the high vibe tribe podcast tuning. And but yeah, Vicky, lovely to speak to you. Thank you so much for your time. People want to reach out to you. They can do on LinkedIn or show your website as well on the on the show notes. And but yeah, good luck with the full time.

Yes, well, give that an edit.

Yeah, that'd be great.

Super. Thank you very much. Yeah. Exciting times. Thank you very much for having me. I've really enjoyed it. It's been good to chat to you. Thank you.

and we will catch up soon.

You're very welcome.