Green Living and Profit: Financial, Social, and Environmental Prosperity in Coliving

Discover the secrets of harmonizing our lives with nature's economy as sustainability expert and FairShares Commons director Gareth joins us for an inspiring conversation on ColivingDAO Insights. Together, we unravel the intricate web connecting financial profit, environmental degradation, and the power of community-focused living. Gareth's extensive experience brings an enlightening perspective on how we've historically favored financial gains at the expense of our planet, and how a pivot towards ColivigDAO communities could mark the dawn of a regenerative future.

Embark on a journey through the transformative potential of the FairShares Commons and innovative corporate structures that promise more than just a roof over your head. Our discussion delves into the heart of sustainable coliving spaces, where investments in local greenery and community-centric initiatives aren't just good deeds but strategic moves that enhance the value of natural, social, and financial capitals alike. We explore the ripple effect of nurturing multiple forms of capital, setting off a chain reaction that amplifies communal prosperity and paves the path for a future where every member thrives.

Finally, we tackle the urgency of a renewable energy revolution and the principles of a circular economy that redefine waste as the starting point of something new. Gareth's insights underscore the significance of this paradigm shift, not only for the health of our planet but for the enduring success of our societies. Join us as we reimagine a world where ColivingDAO communities are not mere housing solutions but beacons of innovation, actively participating in crafting a regenerated society that honors the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit. This episode isn't just a conversation; it's a call to action for a sustainable tomorrow.

Transcript

Daniel: 0:09

Welcome everyone to ColivingDAO Insights. This is your co-host, daniel, and today, in yet another episode, I'm joined as usual by my co-host, gareth. Hi Gareth, hey Dan, great to have all of you here today. Glad to be joined by Gareth as well. Today we're gonna be talking about something very, very important, something that is actually a key component in the co-livingdown structure that we're building, and it's a very key element in nowadays society as well. We'll be talking more in depth about sustainability and regeneration and, gareth, you're actually the perfect person to discuss this with. You are a sustainability lead for the UK healthcare system and you're also the director of future comments, so I know you've been involved with sustainability in the regeneration for a very long time. We're passionate, so I'm very excited about our conversation today.

Gareth: 1:05

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it too, dan. Environmental sustainability is something I'm very passionate about, and we'll talk about more and go into some details on exactly how co-living down is also a vehicle for environmental sustainability, and beyond that, into regeneration, which we'll talk about, explain as well.

Daniel: 1:24

Absolutely, and sustainability is really important right now. Because of the direction that our society has taken in relatively recent times Not too recent we can see in the historically for a very long time, a couple of things have happened that haven't really been too nice to the environment, and one of these things is we noticed that profit has been often prioritized, especially financial profits. We'll be talking today about profit in a number of different ways because, as we discussed before, there's multiple types of capital, not just financial. But when we look at financial profit, it's something that has been prioritized by enterprises, businesses and individuals as well, and societies, so to speak, for a very, very long time. This happened at the expense of nature, at the expense of other types of capital, including natural capital. So the environment has really suffered, and we've seen a lot of large corporations as well, just to give an example, make decisions based on how to maximize profits without really taking into account the impact that their actions could have on nature and the environment in general. This is something that right now, I can't say it's changed, because it hasn't really changed, although there is something happening already. There is a shift, and this comes from the realization that nature is a very valuable capital, and it's very important that decisions are made taking nature into account as well, and we'll discuss them more in depth.

Daniel: 2:55

On the other hand, we have another dynamic that also hasn't been too kind to nature, and we're talking about the individualistic form of living that somehow we've developed. This was in much more recent times. Living in single family units is something that hasn't really been very common until very, very recently, and this is something that, again, is not very sustainable, because the idea that everyone should ideally live alone, isolated from the rest of the people, the rest of the community, and literally duplicating or multiplying all the things that someone needs If you think about home appliances, for example, it's probably the first time in history that everyone has not everyone yet, but at least everyone aims in our society to have their own individual appliances and equipment and facilities for everything they do Like. Imagine kitchens, for example, imagine laundry facilities and so on. Was there another time in history where an individual had their own individual washing machine, for example, and their own individual Hoover, and also a different kitchen utensils and so on?

Daniel: 4:12

This is pretty much the first time that we live in this way, and obviously this has created a lot of waste a lot of stress, put a lot of stress on the natural resources as well. So we have these forces. It's not limited to this, of course, but these are two of the main forces that have really put a strain on the resources that we have. Natural resources and the environment has been suffering, and this is something that right now, we've seen already some attempts to change, and, with the concept of sharing economy, a lot of companies and businesses have already been trying to address that by allowing people to share more resources and so on, and pulling resources is something that has worked to an extent, has certainly improved the situation to a certain extent. However, this has been done in a way that is simply too superficial because of the structure of the systems. That simply doesn't allow for deeper interventions. So what we'll be discussing today is how we can go more in depth to address all these challenges. Gareth, what are your thoughts?

Gareth: 5:17

Yeah, brilliant, dan. That's a great introduction and you know when we, when we talk about environmental sustainability, some of the big problems at the moment and I'm sure most people are very familiar with these, but it's worth a quick recap. Climate change is the big one, obviously. From greenhouse gas emissions, that's a huge problem. In any company or co-living that is only prioritizing financial profits maybe not won't be paying attention to their greenhouse gas emission profile. And then the other big one is biodiversity and protecting nature itself. And then looking at waste and waste materials. How do we reduce waste, recycle more waste and cause less, you know, material harm on the environment? Those are the big ones that we're looking at when we talk about environmental sustainability. And, of course, there's a whole host of other mini goals within that, such as reducing single use plastics, making water use more efficient and finding ways to passively cool and heat buildings, but that comes under the umbrella of climate change, so that there are lots of components. But that gives a nice overview of exactly what we're talking about when we're talking about sustainability. So how does co-living DAO enable environmental sustainability? Well, there's a number of elements in here and there's some really powerful unique elements in the structure of co-living DAO that enable this, and the first one is that we use the fair shares commons as a legal incorporation structure for the company and for each co-living DAO co-living community, which is itself its own fair shares commons company. Each community is its own fair shares commons company, and the fair shares commons is a multi-stakeholder structure, as we discussed in previous podcasts. The residents, the investors, the owners and partners and other stakeholders all have power and a say in exactly how the company is run, and so what that means as soon as you take away all the voting power from investors and company owners and give some of it to all these other stakeholders is that they're much more likely to protect the environment, because it's not just about the money, right? So multi-stakeholder decisions are more likely to protect the environment. You can also, inside the fair shares commons, there is a stewardship structure, so there are stewards who are kind of like the wise elders and they're there to protect the company and steer it into the long-term future, and you can, as an option, appoint a steward to represent nature in each co-living DAO community company, or you could appoint a director on the board to represent nature as an alternative.

Gareth: 8:11

But there are ways. This is one of the really powerful ways in the fair shares commons to add that additional protection and actually give a voice to nature. Giving a voice to nature as a stakeholder is quite an interesting concept, and this isn't the first place it's been done. This is starting to be discussed at a serious level in company politics and company governance structures. How do you actually protect nature? You give it a voice. You give it a voice on the board of directors, or even higher up if you're able to, and then again on the legal side for the fair shares commons, any co-living DAO community that wants to be part of our federation or become a co-living DAO community in the first place of course has to use the Fair Shares Commons legal incorporation structure, and inside that structure there are legal requirements for those co-living communities to uphold with regards to environmental sustainability, and there are four main categories in there.

Gareth: 9:18

The first one is that they'll commit to achieving net zero emissions as quickly as possible and often faster than the government regulations require, and that means that each co-living community will be looking at ways they can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions inside the buildings and the operation of the buildings and even external to the buildings, and get that down as fast as possible. This, of course, is aided by higher energy efficiency measures, but on the whole it would be achieved eventually by using 100% renewable energy for all building purposes. All heating, all cooling, all electricity and all other aspects of energy use in those buildings will be 100% powered by renewable energy or close to it. And then the third big environmental sustainability pillar is a circular economy. What do we mean by that?

Gareth: 10:18

If you get achieved 100% circular economy which wouldn't be achieved immediately for each co-living DAO community but can be legally embedded that they move towards it as quickly as possible then what that means is that you have a zero waste system. All waste materials are reused or recycled and any materials inside the buildings that are used by, say, for example, the residents, for example, furniture, could be sourced from circular economy companies, companies that create furniture out of existing waste materials from other places. And then the fourth big pillar is the protection of local biodiversity, or green and blue spaces, simply protecting nature in the local spaces. So by legally embedding these four pillars in the Fair Shares Commons, legal and structure of every single co-living DAO community in the Federation, we have a very strong commitment to environmental sustainability across the board and that gives you a picture at the high level, dan, does that cover everything we wanted to say there about giving that overview of how co-living DAO will enable environmental sustainability?

Daniel: 11:41

Yes, garth, that's a great overview, and the thing I really want to emphasize is the fact that this is very different from simply stating that we want to address sustainability concerns or matters. This is something that is embedded in the fabric and is effectively included at an incorporation level in a company. So when you look at what companies out there are trying to do, they have a goal, they have a mission great and certainly some companies have something also a little bit deeper than just stating they want to achieve something. But with the Fair Shares Commons structure, things become possible because there's a number of opportunities, a number of things that can actually be done to ensure that this is going to stay a long-term commitment. And this is not just something that in the short term is done and then, as soon as time passes and maybe we see I don't know, for example, profit's going down a little bit, then someone can say, hey, you know what? Let's just shut down all this and a bit of initiatives and let's just make more money. This is something that is prevented in the way the Fair Shares Commons company's incorporated and it's so important because we understand that there can be short-term fluctuation but in the long term, paying close attention to the impact of what we do on the environment is something that is going to give us the best result.

Daniel: 13:11

And when we talk about profits, we mentioned multiple types of capital. We spoke about this many times in the podcast already. We're looking at maximizing different types of capital. So financial capital, certainly one of the priorities. I'm not claiming that we're not a charted, it's not what we're attempting to do here but certainly in parallel with maximizing financial profit, we're looking to maximize natural profit as well, and not just that. As we mentioned, there's a lot of other things that will happen, especially the community element, ensuring the maximization of social capital as well, and so on. So, gareth, what we can talk about is a little bit more in-depth. How, exactly, through Fair Shares Commons, company corporation structure, how can we do all this and how can we ensure that this is a long-term commitment, not just a short-term patch or solution, but a long-term philosophy that can be reflected by concrete actions that will be taken consistently over time?

Gareth: 14:27

Yeah, sure, and I like the way you frame that Diane actually in terms of natural capital and natural profits and actually, if you bring it back to a real-world experience for the residents, by actually by enhancing nature, you're going to enhance the experience that the residents have in each of these co-living Dall communities. And when we talk about, for example, enhancing local green and blue spaces and we could say, allocate a funding pot for the enhancement of local green and blue spaces in each co-living Dall community, as a resident that means that you have nature in your doorstep. So as soon as you go outside the building there might be a little park or a green space with tree cover that was intentionally funded and created by that co-living Dall community and that really adds natural capital, sure, and natural profits, if you want to call it that, but also because that enhances the residents' experience. That should then convert into a financial benefit for the co-living Dall community. It means it's more valuable. It's a more valuable community to be a part of and they might see that reflected in, for example, the demand that people want to live there. There might be a waiting list for residents that want to live there which goes up because they know that there's really nice green and blue spaces around the building and they can get closer to nature, for example. And that moves into exactly the way you're framing it, dan, to talk about how this benefits things beyond the finances and beyond improving nature, and that's a great thing to do in nature. And when we talk about environmental sustainability, I mean really that means do no harm to nature. It means, you know, keep human society and human activities going, but don't do any harm to nature.

Gareth: 16:22

And a lot of people in the space are starting to say, well, we can do better than that. We can regenerate nature, we can enhance it and make it better. And if and you know, why stop there? Why stop at just enhancing nature? Why not look at all the elements of human capital, social capital, enhancing human well-being and we spoke about this in a lot of detail in previous podcasts somehow residents have a voice to shape the community and they become co-owners, and how all the stakeholders involved in the Co-Living Dahl Federation really benefit and get a lot of well-being and jobs and connections and partnerships with that business structure.

Gareth: 17:06

And so we're starting to get a picture of a true representation of people, planet and profit and a real three-way win across all of them in the way that Co-Living Dahl is structured, and that's really what we're talking about here. We're talking about going beyond simple environmental sustainability and moving into what we call regeneration or a regenerative concept. Why not regenerate people, planet and profit and enhance all three right, and that's really exciting. That is a huge enabler for some big changes inside the Co-Living Dahl communities and the Federation of Communities.

Daniel: 17:51

Absolutely. That's a very big game changer, as you put it, and this is something that, again, we're looking to do with a very specific structure. Now, what's interesting is that we do have many concrete actions just like you've introduced as well, garth that can effectively be implemented because of this structure. Now, we mentioned a couple of things in the past as well, but, just to be clear, the way we solve this problem, because some people may argue hey, you know what, how do you maximize multiple types of capital. I mean, there has to be a trade-off, there has to be a compromise. How do you actually do that? And, of course, when we talk about maximization, we're talking about the long-term outlook as well. So we strongly believe that if you solely look at the short-term, there might be some apparent conflicts. They're not real conflicts, they're more dilemmas, like do we do it this way or that way? But certainly, if we are short-sighted and we look at the very short-term, we might find a situation like that. But, like you also suggested, garth, once we look at the long-term, we realize that maximizing one type of capital also helps us maximize another type of capital, and so on. And this is obvious in your example, garth, when you say, having maximized natural capital so you have an improved nature, not just minimize the impact, but having actually a favorable impact on nature. This allows people to have a much better experience and, in turn, have better social capital, and this might actually attract more demand. And having more demand, profit can increase as well. So better financial capital. Now, if we have more capital, guess what? We can utilize that capital to continue this virtual circle and improve nature, and so on and so forth.

Daniel: 19:51

So one of the initiatives that are key effectively to the type of incorporation that we're utilizing is ensuring that all the companies involved, they have the option to effectively create a pot, a pot of resources. It could be money, it could be financial resources, it could be time, it could be labor. Let's think about money for a moment. If we look at the profits of the companies, there's going to be different allocations and one of the allocations it could be a small portion of the profits we're not talking about breaking the bank or anything but it could be a small portion of the profit that can be utilized specifically towards natural capital. So what the company would be doing in that case is take some profits or convert financial capital into natural capital with the idea of making sure that that side is also improving so that, in turn, everything else improves as well, just like in the virtual circle that we've described. So, gareth, this is one of the examples of how this can be implemented. What else can you add on this?

Gareth: 21:01

Yeah, thanks, diane. There are many, many examples that you could add here. And, as you really rightly said, improving one capital doesn't need to be a trade-off between the other capitals. And this is really interesting because this starts to get into the realm of regenerative economics. And for anyone that wants to dive into that topic deeper, I recommend two books. One is Rebuild by Graham Boyd and another one is Net Positive by Paul Pullman Two amazing books that talk about how regenerative economics can eliminate some of those trade-offs that we traditionally think about when we think about economics. And so, yeah, there's loads of examples beyond local blue spaces and green spaces, as you alluded to, diane, where we could create a funding pot for each co-living-dial community and that funding pot can be used to enhance those local green and blue spaces. But it goes beyond that too, into when you look at the human capital and the benefits for residents and the benefits for the other stakeholders and co-living-dial.

Gareth: 22:09

The way that the governance decisions are made effectively gives a kind of real-time democracy.

Gareth: 22:16

Decisions are made by all the stakeholders that are a part of the co-living-dial federation or the local community.

Gareth: 22:24

For example, if there's a local partner company that supplies events something simple like yoga classes for a co-living-dial community, that partner becomes a stakeholder in that co-living-dial company.

Gareth: 22:42

That partner company will then have an input into the decisions that are made in co-living-dial. And of course, we've spoken about the residents having a lot of decision-making power inside the communities, which is a real big benefit. But what that means is you start to get real-time democracy inside co-living-dial communities, not just for the residents but for all those other stakeholders. And it could start to touch the local community, like these partner companies that, for example, supply yoga classes to the co-living-dial residents. And when those local communities get a taste of real-time decision-making, that could start to really change the way that local decisions are made in the wider community. It can start to influence local politics and people might then expect a higher standard of decision-making from their local politicians and that has huge spin-off benefits for the local community, starting with something as simple as supplying yoga classes to the community. And there's a whole host of other examples I'm sure we could think about there.

Daniel: 23:54

Exactly so. Really getting the local community involved is key to this. And yes, last week we spoke about governance structures and how effectively we are envisioning self-managing teams and governance in general, so having residents, employees and even partners as well as investors, of course all be involved in this shared decision-making. One of the big advantages of the fair shares common structure is that it's also possible to appoint stewards that steer each company in a certain direction, based on what's best for everyone, what's best for all the stakeholders as well, and so on. And this is something very relevant when it comes to nature and natural capital, because the fact that traditional companies don't necessarily have this opportunity. They have different governance structures, they might not be able to implement something like this, whereas with the fair shares comments, we can literally take advantage of the governance structure that we explored more in depth last week to benefit nature as well. Gareth, do you want to expand on this?

Gareth: 25:14

Yeah, absolutely so.

Gareth: 25:15

When you asked me about how do we make sure that the co-living DAL communities and the Federation really protect nature in the long term and maintain this lofty talk towards regenerating natural spaces and regenerating going beyond sustainability, one of the most powerful mechanisms is, yes, to appoint a steward or a director to represent nature.

Gareth: 25:41

As we said before, multi-stakeholder decision-making is more likely to protect the environment. But also there could be a legal commitment inside each of these co-living DAL communities to perform an annual environmental, social and financial audit, so to cover all those different capitals and measure them or provide proxy measures for them and keep a track of them on an annual basis, and this could be done by a third-party auditing company that looks at some of these elements by tracking that over time, along with those legal requirements that are embedded in the fair share's common structure. This ensures long-term commitment to environmental sustainability and environmental regeneration, as well as taking care of the human well-being elements and the financial profits, which are just as important. We're not talking about trade-offs. We are talking about how do we enhance all three of these in the long term and stick to these commitments, and these are the really powerful multiple pillars in there that can enable that to happen and that's simply goes straight.

Daniel: 27:07

We've seen a lot of companies that started with very good intentions but then, simply because they didn't have this antifragile system to go on over and over over time, they just found themselves in a situation where it was easy to kind of lose focus on certain goals and prioritize different things and eventually, all the good intentions did not materialize over time. So this is exactly why we're doing all this, and just a couple of things based on what I believe a lot of listeners are thinking about as well. We do have a lot of people that are involved in climate change actions, regeneration and so on. There might be some people that are a little bit newer to the whole concept of climate change. You might have some questions as well, and so on.

Daniel: 28:00

So we spoke about nature as a capital, we spoke about sustainability and regeneration. Karath, would you like to add something in relation to climate change, which is a big topic? And we know that the way nature has been treated so far has created potential imminent issues regarding climate, and some actions are really necessary. So we're not even talking about something that is just desirable. Some people may be thinking yes, nature, it means we have better landscapes, so it's more pleasant to the eye, it's nicer to have more green around. This is only one of the benefits, but when we talk about benefits, we're talking about necessities if we want to survive as species as well, if we want to have a planet where we can keep on living. So, garth, how does this all relate to climate change, and why is it so important that this action is taken imminently?

Gareth: 29:07

Yeah, that's a very good point, dan. So the main element of climate change right now is the use of energy is causing greenhouse gas emissions, and most of that is coming from the use of fossil fuels. And so we're in the midst of a transition to change fossil fuels as our primary energy system for human society to renewable energy, which means the cleanest forms of energy, which are sun, wind and water forms of energy and plus a bit of geothermal. And these are renewable because they're more or less infinite in their supply. And even if there wasn't climate change, you know there is a finite supply of these other fossil fuel energy sources. So at some point in the future we would need to, in the imminent future, we would need to switch anyway to renewable energy. But climate change is really a big threat in the here and now, and this is now an international scientific consensus.

Gareth: 30:12

The evidence is extremely strong. The human induced climate change from the use of mainly fossil fuels is causing the planet to heat up and is causing more extreme weather heat waves, storms, hurricanes, all the stuff you've seen on the news already. I won't go into a lot of detail on that, but what this means ultimately is that in the coming decades. If we don't control those greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures are going to continue to rise. And that might not sound like a big deal. You might say, oh, I live in a cold place, it would be nice if it was a bit warmer, right. But no, we're talking about stuff that's a lot more serious than that. When the temperature patterns and weather patterns change, that really affects our ability to grow food in certain places and to have secure water supplies, and so if we have disruptions, and major disruptions, to food and water supplies, that starts to impact human well being. And then when we, if we expand that so we need to get on top of the climate change problem we need to switch to clean energy. We have the technology to do it, it's going to happen. The economics line up as well. Then we get into the bigger picture of okay, we're actually using natural resources to create materials, and we're, you know, more and more spaces are being taken over by human beings, and what that means is that's a problem because again, it can start to impact our food and water systems. If, for example, we turn the Amazon Raines forest into a city, we would lose a huge amount of natural capital and a huge amount of carbon absorption, natural and natural carbon sink for the atmosphere to take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. And oxygen is what we breathe. Right, we all breathe oxygen. We need it on a daily basis. Oxygen is created by plants, so if we start to really harm the amount of plant cover over the planet, it's going to impact human health.

Gareth: 32:23

There are very strong connections between protecting the environment and protecting human health, and so, ultimately, the picture I'm trying to paint here is that, if we think about the economy, I think people are tending to think about money and the economy as a separate thing from nature. Nature is this kind of side bonus, almost right, it was like you were saying, dan, oh, it's nice if we have a park, a local park where we can go for a walk. No, no, no, we're talking about something much bigger than this. We're talking about the fact that the economy is actually dependent on nature. Our human economy is actually a small little bubble that is enabled by the natural economy, which is the gifts that Mother Nature gave us on this planet, and that is where all natural resources come from, and those resources are the things we're using to create our financial economy. So if we start to damage and inflict serious damage on nature, we're going to damage our own economy. So it's not a question of having nice green and blue spaces.

Gareth: 33:32

This is, as you said, it's a question of survival and it's a question of how do we ensure human beings and human society can thrive in the long term future alongside nature.

Gareth: 33:45

And the answer is we have to protect and enhance nature in order to enhance and protect our economy and money, because if you lose one, you lose the other, and that's what we're talking about with environmental sustainability and that's what we're talking about with regeneration. And hey, you know, the good news is the good news is, if you enhance all of these elements, so enhance nature, you enhance the economy, you enhance finances and you enhance human well-being. That's a future that looks very different from the world we have today. It's a very positive future and it is an advanced human society that sits within and protects Mother Nature and the natural systems that we all depend on. So you know, there's a lot to play for here and we want to be a part of that. We want to be a contributor to making sure that that future happens. And it's not a trade-off, it's not about money or nature. It's about how do we get all of these things and how do we make sure everyone on this planet thrives. That's what's important for me and that's what's important in this project.

Daniel: 34:52

That's all extremely insightful, gareth, and I really like the expression Mother Nature, because nature is like a mother and even though we're arguably growing up as humans, it's important to still respect our mother and understand the role that our mother plays in our lives as well. So very, very insightful and important. And speaking about economy, you just mentioned earlier circular economy, which is a concept that some of the listeners I'm thinking may be already familiar with Maybe some aren't. So, in a nutshell, if we can explain a bit more what is circular economy and how exactly utilizing the principle of circular economy can benefit nature and, in particular, in the structure that we're utilizing here at Clevelandale, yeah, sure.

Gareth: 35:46

So when we talk about a circular economy, it's helpful to talk about the linear economy, which is basically the economy we have today. What do I mean by a linear economy? I mean, okay, when you buy stuff, that stuff has been made of materials from somewhere and then, at the end of its life, you throw it away and it becomes waste. And traditionally we used to just throw everything into landfills. Right, we used to take our stuff that we'd bought and there was no longer usable and we would throw it into landfills. And that's the linear economy. Now we only have finite resources on planet Earth. We have one planet and so there is a limited amount of resources. So if we just take stuff, use it and throw it away, we're going to have a planet covered in garbage. That would be the linear economy taken to its most extreme example. And so we really have a solution to this mountain of garbage by building a bigger circular economy. A circular economy simply means that you take these materials and you reuse them, so you bring them back into a circular loop. What's the phrase? One man's trash is another man's treasure. I really like that phrase. That really sums up the circular economy, and the good news is, the circular economy again can be a huge contributor to enhancing our financial economy, because if companies are buying waste from other companies and then turning that into useful stuff, then you're creating financial benefits from the same materials and you get away from that A the finite problem of a finite amount of materials to use and make things from. And, b you get away from that. Where do we put the waste problem? And so when we talk about a circular economy, we're talking about moving towards a zero waste system. It doesn't mean there's no waste, it means that you reuse all that waste, and in the context of co-living DAO, as I said before, one simple example is you can use upcycled furniture. Upscycled furniture means furniture that's made from waste materials. It could be old furniture or it could be furniture made of other stuff that was turned into waste and then recreated into furniture, and the good news is there's loads of companies in this sphere. Now the circular economy is becoming a really big business opportunity, and so there's more financial benefits there too, in the context of what we are aiming to do with co-living DAO, because we will enable circular economy companies, local furniture suppliers, local waste companies that take, say, food waste, turn it into biofuels or turn food waste into compost to grow crops. So, again, there are huge benefits across all those different capitals that we spoke about before. And so, yeah, the circular economy is basically how do we become a 100% reusable economy?

Gareth: 38:59

And there's some amazing resources you can find in the Eileen MacArthur Foundation In particular. Their butterfly diagram is a really nice display of how the circular economy works. If you visualize a butterfly with two wings, there's two circles on either side. One wing represents the technical materials economy, so all the things that are not natural materials, like steel and cement and plastics and all these kinds of things. And with technical materials, what you want to do is recover them and reuse them and recycle them all of them.

Gareth: 39:36

And for natural materials it's a bit more easy. That's the other wing of the butterfly. For natural materials, they already get recycled by Mother Nature. Food rots and is reused and redistributed in the natural environment. When plants die, they can be used as compost to grow other plants. So by taking advantage of biological systems and biological materials, it's one way to really enhance the circular economy and do it in a smart way. That's for those who want to go a bit deeper and that gives you an idea of what it entails. It basically means zero waste and 100% reusability, which again enables our financial economy to thrive in the long term and would enable co-living DAL communities to thrive in the long term too, while contributing to these circular economy businesses.

Daniel: 40:30

That's brilliant, gareth. At the end of the day, it's all about not being short-sighted, seeing the big picture, understanding what's going to happen based on what we're doing today, and taking action in order to maximize not just one thing, but multiple capitals and in fact, we use this expression very often the triple win, enabling the triple win people, planet profits. So, gareth, as closing thought, what would you like to add on the people, planet profit, which is what we're doing effectively here at Co-living DAL?

Gareth: 41:06

Yeah, I want to make a strong statement about this one because, as you said before, people, planet, profit is a line that's doled out by multiple companies who say, oh yeah, we really care about not just profits, we care about people and planet too. But this, in Co-living DAL, we're going way beyond the typical corporate social responsibility lines and PR promotions. We're talking about enhancement of all three. We're talking about regeneration of all and the regeneration of all those types of capital human capital, social capital, natural capital and financial capital. So this is a really, you know, a deeply embedded commitment across the Co-living DAL Federation of Co-living Communities to enhance all three of these things and by enhancing all three, each benefits the other. So we're not just doing this as a PR campaign. We're going to have a real impact on all three and this is a vehicle to really change the way that human society operates so that we all thrive together alongside Mother Nature. And that's awesome. And that's what we mean by the three-way win across people, planet and profit here at Co-living DAL.

Daniel: 42:24

Awesome, and thank you so much, gareth, for this very insightful discussion. It's been great to talk about this and we're all very excited about turning this into reality, and thanks everyone for listening as well. We'll be back as usual next week. See you then.