People Planet Profit Podcast - Episode 2 | Talking 2022 Sustainability Trends with Robin Mellon

Welcome to the People Planet Profit Podcast.

I'm Hayley Jarick, CEO of the Supply Chain Sustainability School and today I'm joined by Robin Mellon.

Robin Mellon has combined his love of the environment, passion for sustainability, experience with supply chains, and qualifications in real estate and finance to become one of Australia’s experts on sustainable supply chains.

The former Chief Operating Officer of the Green Building Council of Australia, and founding CEO of Australia's Supply Chain Sustainability School, Robin is now CEO of Better Sydney, Project Manager for the Property Council’s Modern Slavery Working Group and Supplier Platform, and NSW Program Adviser for Better Building Finance.

Robin was a member of the Australian Government's first Modern Slavery Advisory Committee, is a Judging Chair for the NSW Sustainability Awards and Banksia Awards, one of the International WELL Building Institute's Global Advisory, and a member of Waverley Council's Environmental Sustainability Advisory Committee.

Full transcript can be found on our website. 

Transcript

People Planet Profit Podcast

Hosted by Hayley Jarick, Supply Chain Sustainability School

Episode 2 talking with Robin Mellon

Welcome to the People Planet Profit Podcast. I'm Haley Jarick, CEO of the Supply Chain Sustainability School. And today I'm joined by Robin. 

Robin has combined his love of the environment, passion for sustainability, experience with supply chains, and qualifications in real estate and finance to become one of Australia's experts on sustainable supply chains.

The former Chief Operating Officer of the Green Building Council of Australia and founding CEO of Australian Supply Chain Sustainability School. Robin is now CEO of Better Sydney, Project Manager for the Property Council’s Modern Slavery Working Group and Supplier Platform, and NSW Program Advisor for Better Building Finance.

Robin was a member of the Australian Government's first Modern Slavery Advisory Committee is a Judging Chair for the NSW Sustainability Awards and Banksia Awards, one of the International WELL Building Institute's Global Advisory and a member of Waverley Council’s Environmental Sustainability Advisory Committee.

Welcome. Thank you Haley. Great to be talking to you. I think after that bio that's all the time for the podcast.

We wrap it up, thanks for joining us.

So obviously Robin and I are friends. If you hadn’t picked that up from there from a little bit of the intro there. So hopefully we don't get too casual in the conversation today and try and keep us on track. We're going to touch on three things. I'm going to keep up with the first thing on our list Robin - what is it like to run as sustainable, small business?

It's a really interesting question and I had to give it some thought beforehand, because really mixed emotions and mixed reactions, I'll narrow it down to four things:

1.     The first is that it's amazing. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart, running a sustainable small business is amazing because there is exposure to extraordinary people and organisations who are quite literally at the forefront of social and environmental and economic change. And so, you know, whether it's amazing people working in supply chains or human rights and modern slavery or diversity inclusion and gender or greenhouse gas, emissions, and energy, everything all the way through that exposure is amazing. And so getting to see what's really happening and what’s changing. 

2.     At the same time, I'm going to be honest - it's quite lonely. I think a small business can be just you and especially with COVID, especially with the pandemic and the lockdowns it's, it's been quite lonely. The video conferences are good, but obviously they don't provide the same level of connection. And I think that's something which we all have all these different ways.

3.     I think certainly, you know, running a sustainable small business is really quite inspiring. I get a chance now and again, whenever I down tools just to look at what's being achieved, and that could be just as simple as a document and explain, or projects or meetings, but getting to the end of 2021 and breathing a sigh of relief on Christmas Eve. Oh, my goodness. Look, look what was achieved this year, much of that, obviously in conjunction with that people and organisations, it can be really inspiring. This is how fast things are moving. 

4.     I guess lastly, it's even more sustainable than ever, I guess, running a sustainable small business now that we're not flying as much as we used to. It really does come down to your power and your internet and if your car if you have one, in my case, it's more sustainable than ever. So that's kind of refreshing to actually be walking the talk. 

Yeah, I suppose that that's one thing too often. When I speak with a lot of people from small businesses, I think there's so many things that they'd like to do, and it's so hard to get your teeth into a few easy wins along the way.  

I suppose that's usually one of the benefits of small business, right? Is that, you know, when the world changes around you, you can react quite quickly to those circumstances, and be really agile in that sense of adapting to the world around you. When you can do that and stay true to your values and make your business more sustainable it must be quite rewarding.

Absolutely, you know, big businesses can be slow to change, small can be much more agile, much more adapt at the same time. You know, we've got Better Sydney as a member of the UN Global Compact Australia and, you know, once a year we have to show how we've improved on the year before, and I am scratching my head slightly we have carbon neutral energy and I haven’t flown anywhere so I how am I going to do better next year, I don’t know yet.

I think that's kind of, yeah, continuous improvement is one thing, but you know, when you're getting from great to brilliant that's, that's the hardest step that you can take. Right? It's usually getting people from the base level to good is a big enough step in itself to try and get along the way. I am sure that you've, you've influenced many, people and organisations along the way with all of the different hats that you have worn.

Three-piece suits obviously. Of course.

Really sort of being able to influence those things in different topics, in different areas, I think that there's a few things, especially from a social environmental point of view that have really risen to the surface with COVID as being integral to the sustainability of business, you know, how are we going to keep these things going?

I suppose a lot of people then sort of touching on the experience that you've had leads us into the second question that I would like to talk with you about, and that's kind of, you know, what's going to keep us busy this year. The last year, the past few years, we've had a lot of people talking about greenhouse gases and climate change, and what people talking about modern slavery, we're talking about work conditions, human rights, especially with the Olympics going on at the moment it is at the forefront of a lot of people’s conversations. 

What does 2022 feel like for you? What are the top three topics that you think will keep you busy this year?

Well finding a top three, it was really hard, I had at least 11, but I've narrowed it down to three and they are supply chain related because you know, how much of the supply chain nerd I am at heart. I think first is mobile slavery reporting yes we have been building on this but in terms of what is going to keep to me busy but I think we're at last seeing the information come through from different platforms, obviously 365 platform that has been built for the Property Council of Australia. Lots of different platforms for aesthetics give artists freedom and all of them, we're seeing that information come through and there's a massive amount of information in there. To allow us to have a look at, what do our suppliers know, what do they do, what are they doing, but also what do they need. I think that's going to be one of the important points this year, what do suppliers need to be able to improve. 

That could be as the Supply Chain Sustainability School provides, that could be awareness raising information, posters, videos but it could also be the connections between topics so they don’t think they just need to do this, they can see how everything relates. Modern slavery is definitely the first one. 

The second is one, which if this was in a video you would see me waving my arms around already. One of the topics that really became prominent in 2020 and 2021, was that of supply chain resilience. So massive supply chain, disruption and procurement disruption caused by COVID and by the lockdowns and we've seen that to echo around the world and reported in different ways. But one of the things that it has thrown up is quite how many eggs we put in the one basket. I think lots of organisations that have started doing this modern slavery reporting have realised quite how much of their dollar value spend is with very few suppliers, and when those suppliers get disrupted or whatever reason, they have massive supply chain issues, labour, products, materials, resources, whatever those are. So that concentration, I think he's not a good thing and I think we're going to have to look this year at how we build in more resilience by spreading those supply chains yet further. That's a really long-term thing. You can't just snap your fingers and build new supply chain that will take years. That's going to be one of the things that we're going to need look at. 

The third, and this is where my arms will start cartwheeling frantically, is the intersections between these topics. So we can talk about human rights and modern slavery, we can talk about greenhouse gas emissions, we can talk about gender and diversity inclusion, all of these, innovation and entrepreneurship. I think we need to be looking at the intersections between these topics to understand the really big, the strategic leavers that we need to pull, to actually not just help human rights and modern slavery, but greenhouse gas emissions as well. Then things like empowerment and education of women and girls improving family planning, will actually have multiple benefits rippling through multiple countries and supply chains. I think it's those intersections that we need to start looking at because it's great that we're starting to deal with these one by one, but we need to be looking broader and understanding what really big strategic levers are that we can throw on lights behind or our collective industry or sector, all that leverage and can really change.

Yes I think you're spot on with a lot of that and a few things of what you said really resonated with me and, and the one that sort of sticks out, it's sort of I suppose, as we started to do all of the work in the, with the modern slavery statements and really starting to do that investigation into our supply chains, I know so many organisations, it was the catalyst for them to actually know their supply chains, beyond tier 1, you know?

Previously before that, all the ignorance they had around the environmental and social impacts of their supply chains are now they can't plead ignorance anymore. It's really starting to find the resolutions in those and all the synergies, like you said, between it's not surprising that if you don't care enough about your people between slave, then you probably don't do a few other things as well. All of those little indicators that red flags that pop up when you start to, to really sort of dive in there. 

What we can be all sort of airy fairy, I can be high level about those intersections between the big picture issues, but it startles me, it genuinely surprises me how some of Australia's largest organisations and I'm not just talking construction, I am talking multiple sectors. They will have really well-developed policies, that are well staffed, well thought through policies around things like diversity inclusion or parental leave, which are touching on multiple issues. But they seem entirely separate to their policies around human rights or around whistle-blower type involvement, hearing the voice of the worker. And this is our opportunity to actually look at all of these together and think, okay, how do we give people a voice?

How do we listen to our staff and our suppliers in order to improve things? Not just for them, but for the organisation as a whole, for our shareholders, if that's how they're thinking, and also for society. 

Yes definitely. I think the other areas that you've really touched on is around that, the over-simplification of suppliers in that chain, like how much dollar spend is happening to just a few people and how vulnerable that can be when all the eggs are in the one basket as use the saying that you use.

We've seen that across automotive or technology or all of these, and it causes severe and long-term ripples through not just the procurement process, but through community building, industry changes.

Yes, and we are starting to see a few of those procurement supply chain channels, moving circular supply chain. So, you know, the same supplier you might ship your, secondary resources off to might be one of the suppliers you purchase goods from as well, and how that cycle effect can really start to decrease for waste and things for different organisations and the complexities of those relationships that are your customer and your supplier, and not either, or, and how does that work with all the internal processes and things that happening and those complex ecosystems and collaborations that are required to get the best outcome, as opposed to having this very black and white boundary level relationships between different parts of the supply chain. So hopefully we can get some more transparency through them and getting more of our supply chain collaborating with each other, which I'd always sort the common thing that you and I've been fighting for years so hopefully that gets in there as well. 

Hopefully this year, the linear economy will be dead long, live the circular economy, but at least we can start making moves towards how do we put things back in circulation? How do we reuse these resources or production materials in a much smarter way to make business sense not just some airy-fairy principal?

Yes, absolutely and I think I'm very conscious of waste as a failure, you have secondary resources. Like if you wouldn't throw away money, then don't throw away your secondary resources either and really sort of tapping into those relationships that we need because in, you know, in nature there is no waste. So, we really need to trade out businesses and our homes the same way that we would like to, in order to maximise the efficiency of all of those resources that we can get in that space as well. 

We are seeing the beginning of this coming through whether it's supermarkets or green groceries offering the imperfect picks or whether at last we’re seeing in consumer boards or cosmetics we are seeing package that is not pristine virgin plastic but is made from recycled or composite materials. We're starting to see that pervading into the mainstream and that's amazing because it means it will them through, into, into other sectors. 

Yes and I really hope that some of those small businesses like we to loop back to what we're talking to at the start, that, you know, it's often someone with a great idea in their garage or moving back in with their parents in their garage, that had had this great idea for a sustainable business and often go straight to consumer you know, I go fund me page set up and you know, you go and pre-buy something. I really hope some of those small businesses actually step up to commercial level arrangements this year as well, to try and boost the scale of some of those great Aussie inventions that we can hopefully take to the world as well in that space.

Yes well busting that myth. I'm working, moving onto the last part, which is a terrible segue into my last question, Robin, which was around, well, what are the sustainability myths that need to be busted in 2022? I know this is usually a bit of a hot topic for me and maybe because you sort of, you chat with somebody about sustainability for the first time and they throw up all of these common things that you know, I thought we'd put to rest a long time ago, but they still keep rearing their head, I'm sure that you have had similar experiences on different topics. So I know that you could probably name 47, but I'm going to take the two top three, I'll even give you up to five, but three is probably good. 

I can narrow it down to three and I think the first, I’ll come back to this again and again, because again, it doesn't matter the sector or the industry or the country, but one of the myths that I think we need to bust is that big business is bad. 

I think there is an easy tendency to bash big business they are polluting, or they are about shareholder value and not about real change or social outcomes. I think we need to understand the positive behaviours of big businesses and the real opportunities for leverage there. You know, whether you look at the ability for large organisations to come together and really change supply chains, or you actually look at the, you know, the investments by some of these larger organisations in creating something better, not just a bit less bad, but something good.

So that myth that big businesses is automatically bad, I think we need to grow up and move on from that because there's a lot of great examples that doesn't mean, and I will be very careful that doesn't mean all big businesses are good, but I think being very cognizant of what's going on in the opportunities there.

The second and we touched on this earlier, but this is a really important myth, and a lot of it underpins a lot of my work, is that these topics are isolated. You know, we've mentioned, we can talk about food waste or as we just were a section in our economy or greenhouse gas emissions on gender or human rights, the myth is that these topics are isolated. Right we've got 0.2 FTE, so we're going to do a bit of work on human rights or food waste. The answer is that they are all connected, that can be overwhelming, of course, too big too little not going to do anything this year. I think what you need to look at is the way in which they're all connected and therefore, how can we in any good change management perspective? How can we make the cost of inaction, how can make the cost of inaction substantially more and connects all of these together so we can be achieving multiple things. 

The third and last one may sound obvious I'm starting to hear things around the traps, is that modern slavery is going away. Well, you know, we've got the modern slavery act, we're reporting each year and ask for the continuous improvement, so another few years, and that just gets on my nerves because if anything, COVID, pandemic and the message is supply chain disruption has made things a lot worse for a lot of people, and I'm not just talking about levels of poverty or lack of education or gender roles being in trench. I'm talking about vast waves of people being moved from say sex work, or being trafficked into other industries where their labour can be more profitable.

I think we need to get real that modern slavery is probably going to get worse before we start seeing more real improvements and it's going to be even better hidden. So what we need to start doing is start getting smarter about what we know, the way in which we're working with our suppliers, our staff, our connections, and actually build supply chains that we can collaborate with.

Yes I think you are spot on there and I think even just the thought process of some people have been using around modern slavery's sort of year one, we'll do our analysis, year two we’ll educate the supply chain, year three, tick solved. You know, it's kind of in that and it's that continuous rolling that continuous analysis, the continuous education and training, the continuous working with the supply chain, the staying on the ball with the voice of the worker and the voice of your customers and supply chains that are sort of going to keep that prevalent and it's going to evolve because guess what, you know, for hundreds of years, unfortunately, humans have been taking advantage of other humans. You know, just when you think you've found a way to prevent one human rights, abuse and resolve it, another one will pop up somewhere, somewhere else. So we just need to stay constant and vigilant, to protect our species you know, good versus evil and everything in between.

So now having said that I will try and end on a positive and I'm extraordinarily fortunate in that I get to work with multiple sectors and as I said at the beginning, some amazing people, some extraordinary people. In the last month or so I've worked with one of Australia's leading gold mining resources companies, one of Australia's leading dairy cooperatives, one of Australia's leading timber producers importers distributors. Each of those independently doing amazing things and they are stepping up and saying, how do we source ethically? How do we make sure that we're working with our suppliers and not just handing them a plate full of things to do? How do we educate all of our staff to the point that they understand what this means and why it’s important to them as people, but also to our organisation? They are all stepping up to implement real change and I find that so encouraging, but just in, you know, those three seemingly random sectors, there are people pledging to really changing things in 2022.

Isn't that just exciting. You know, it’s what makes me wake up and come to work every day and enjoy my job as well, because you know, you can make money and care for the environment and people at the same time. As the more people where that light bulb turns on for them, it just makes me smile, and brings a warmth to my heart and hope to my future and my kids future and hopefully one day my grandkids future. It really is a pleasure to come to work every day when I get to chat with delightful people like yourself and to work with the supply chain to get towards to that end. 

So thank you very much, Robin, for chatting to me today on the People Planet Profit Podcast.

I'm sure it's not the last time, you and I will talk and hopefully we can invite you back again in the future for, another edition. 

Thank you, Hayley it is a pleasure, to talk to you and yes, I look forward to these podcasts being a part of our regular business.

ENDS