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Episode:
34
Plastic Pollution, Sustainable Business, and Saving Our Oceans with Tim Silverwood
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By now, you probably know that I firmly believe we need to use business to change the world. So, I was very excited to chat with a leader in the environmental movement who also feels the same way, Tim Silverwood.
Tim is a trailblazer in the fight against plastic pollution, known for co-founding the powerful eco-movement Take 3 For The Sea. But that’s not all — he’s also the founder of the Ocean Impact Organisation, a group dedicated to working with innovative startups creating transformative solutions for ocean health.
In this episode he shares:
Key Quotes
More about Tim
Follow Tim on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timsilverwood/?hl=en
The Ocean Impact Organisation website is here: https://www.ocean-impact.org/
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0:00:00
Kia ora kaitiaki and welcome to Now That's What I Call Green. I'm your host,Brianne West, an environmentalist and entrepreneur trying to get you as excitedabout our planet as I am. I'm all about creating a scientific approach tomaking the world a better place, without the judgment and making it fun. And ofcourse, we will be chatting about some of the most amazing creatures we shareour
0:00:24
planet with. So if you are looking to navigate through everything green or notso green, you have come to the right place. Kia ora, welcome back. I am veryexcited about our guest today. We have Tim Silverwood. Now, have you heard ofsomething called Take 3 for the Sea? Well, it's the idea that if you go to thebeach, you pick up three bits of plastic. It's obviously a little bit broader
0:00:45
than that, but that's where that very catchy title has come from. So Tim isjoining me today. He is the definition of an ocean warrior, I guess. He, by hisown definition, was a little bit of a hippy growing up and has moved now intothe belief that business is the way to change the world. Sound familiar? Well,here we go.
0:01:02
Thank you for joining me, Tim. The first question is always the biggest. Tellme about you, your background, how you got to where you are and what it is thatyou
0:01:10
do because you've got a pretty interesting career history, I reckon. Yeah, I'veoccasionally called myself an accidental environmentalist. And I say that whereI definitely had enough things going on around me to shape me into being anenvironmentalist but I never thought I would build and lead an environmentalorganisation, that I would be picketing corporations and leading pushes tochange legislation and all that kind of stuff.
0:01:40
So yeah, grew up in a beautiful patch of bush on the East Coast of Australia.That was probably the first formative experience for me is growing up in thebush, like 25 acres of wilderness around me. And I just used to spend so muchtime out there
0:01:57
immersed in nature. And that developed obviously a love and appreciation ofbiodiversity and all the little things that made life in the bush tick. Andthen just when I went to high school, I really got into geography and learningabout different cultures and different parts of the world and I had agrandmother who loved travel. Long story short, I decided to go and studyscience and
0:02:18
sustainability at uni and thought this might be my career. I might actuallyhelp the planet have a more prosperous future, not just for all those beautifulcritters that I learned to love so much, but obviously for our own species.Loved that. And then got to the end of my degree and thought, oh, well, it'snot that inspiring to go and work for a government body, trying to makeincremental changes or go and work in an industry doing greenwashing. So Ipressed pause, went and travelled the world, did a lot of surfing because I'm asurfer.
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And that was during those travels in my mid-20s where I started seeing theworld's problems firsthand and I particularly started seeing the terriblepollution all across the planet, particularly in those destinations wheresurfers love to go, like the Indonesian archipelago and all throughout exoticdestinations like that. And yeah, long story short, I started with some awesomeladies, Mandy and Roberta, Take 3 for the Sea in 2009, almost 15 years ago. Andthat was wild.
0:03:18
Big journey that one, 15 years ago. You know, back when plastic pollution wascertainly known amongst scientific circles and there was a growing cluster ofenvironmentalists and activists going, hey guys, this is serious, this big oneis blowing up in front of our faces, but it wasn't mainstream. So I got toreally ride a fantastic wave being an environmental activist and going anddoing all sorts of cool things.
0:03:45
And yeah, 10 years, I spent at Take 3 for the Sea and then I sort of startedlooking around going, gee, how come charities and non-profits are constantlythe ones being tasked with cleaning up the mess that is so often the result ofpoor corporate behaviour and government policies that are ineffective. So Ithought, I've got to go and figure out how business works.
0:04:06
And that's where for the last four and a half years, I've been working with areally cool project called Ocean Impact Organisation. And we find and supportstartups and really cool businesses that have got great solutions that changethe way we treat the ocean.
0:04:18
So a bit of a download there, but that's where I am at my career currently. AndI love every day of it.
0:04:24
And yes, so everybody listening, who also listened to the episode with John acouple of weeks back. You will note that I pick people to talk on this pod whothink very like I do, with the idea that business is responsible for saving theworld, not just the non-profits. But let's start with Take 3 for the Sea.
0:04:38
That grew.
0:04:39
That is a big, well, I don't know in terms of headcount or anything else, butthat is a well-known organisation. How did you start it and what advice did youhave for someone who would be wanting to do some kind of non-profitenvironmental work location?
0:04:56
Yeah, well the second part of that question first is an interesting one becauseobviously now I've sort of jumped over the fence a little bit. I still amactively involved with Take 3 for the Sea and support a lot of non-profits andpeople working in that space. But I kind of want to see more and more peoplestepping into the business realm and flexing their entrepreneurial muscle,because I do think strongly, like you do, that business needs to be the sourceof solutions for a
0:05:21
more prosperous and balanced future. But yeah, it happened just really quitebeautifully. I'd had all these ‘aha’ moments of seeing this problem andrealising that at university when I studied sustainability, I was learningabout all the complexity of what it would look like to have economicallysustainable development, and everything was high level and complicated. Andafter all these personal experiences travelling and seeing pollution in everyriver and every
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beach and every corner of every city, I was like, oh, actually, we should juststart by cleaning up our mess. And so it felt very sort of, you know, reducedcompared to the big macro stuff that I'd been learning about. So anyway, Istarted to verbalise that I wanted to do something about just cleaning upbeaches and getting people mobilized to acknowledge this emerging problem anddo something immediately
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about it. I had a couple of instances where people just sort of spurred me on.The ultimate point where I ended up being introduced to my co-founders, Mandyand Roberta, I was invited up onto a stage at a film screening in my hometownwhere they were screening a movie about – it was The Cove, that movie about theTaiji dolphin slaughter. One of the guys who was taking that film around, DaveRastovich, a fantastic professional surfer,
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he just said, just get up there and tell them what you're thinking, what youwant to do. And so I did, and someone in the audience knew about Mandy andRoberta's Take 3 idea, connected me immediately. Within a week, I'm sittingaround a coffee table with them, and the rest is kind of history. I wasstraight away in like, guys, you need help, I can help, let's do this together.And that was the start of an incredible journey that started 15 years ago.
0:06:59
That's very cool. And it is so much timing and luck and often who you know,right? But the very, very first thing you need to do is actually get started inwhatever way
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that looks.
0:07:09
Yeah. And looking back, the real secret sauce, I think, that enabled Take 3 toblow up and become so widely known is of course its simplicity. I maybe didn'tknow it at the time and maybe I developed most of these skills through my timeat Take 3, but messaging and branding and communications turns out to be a realstrong point.
0:07:28
And next to sort of conventional science, I think sociology and understandinghuman behaviour is my thing. Like I really understand that without that, you'renever going to create cut-through, you're never going to inspire, engage, andactually get people to do anything. So I really leant into that, mobilised andused all the tools available with social media and using ambassadors and takingevery single opportunity to get on a stage or be in a film
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or do this or do that and this media. And that, I think, really helped us toget some awareness and the snowball started from there.
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Yeah, very cool.
0:08:02
Do you have any sort of proudest moments or impact stats from it that you canshare?
0:08:08
Like many things, I mean we were a very lean team and the organisationcontinues to be very lean, so you can sort of look at the perception of how bigit is and that sort of belies how small it actually is. So when it came toactually trying to wrap our heads around impact, it was super, super difficult.Until one day we got a knock on the shoulder, tap on the shoulder, and it wasFacebook,
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it was Meta back in the day before. They must have only recently acquiredInstagram, so we're talking about 2015, 2016. And they're like, hey, we've beenwatching you guys, and we're really amazed at how you've been able to use thisplatform to actually get people
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to go out there and enact real world impact. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,we're awesome. And they're like, we want to do a case study on you. And so weactually featured in a book that Instagram, Facebook created about the power ofInstagram. So there's a big profile.
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And anyway, as part of that, they actually helped to analyse a project thatwe'd been doing with the university, trying to actually understand, hey, ifyou're part of this Take 3 community and you're actively engaged and you'redoing your Take 3 for the sea, what does that actually mean in terms of howmany pieces of plastic rubbish your community is picking up? And yeah, some ofthe stats were like, we found out that we were active in 125 countries and wefound out that these average numbers of
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people were picking up this average amount of plastic. And yeah, anyway, it wassuper cool at the time. That actually spurred me on to go. I had some meetingswith Google trying to figure out whether early machine learning tools, like AI,could actually provide us with a software solution so that people could snaptheir Take 3 for the Sea their micro clean up, and we could get real-time dataon what was being found and where.
0:09:57
Anyway, it never got up, but yeah, long story short, it blew my mind how manypeople around the planet were involved and made us realise, gee, our impact isso much bigger than we could ever possibly imagine.
0:10:10
Yeah.
0:10:11
I mean, the biggest was awareness and this idea of it being so simple to make adifference. Take three pieces whenever you go to the beach, go out, right? Andbeach cleanups. And it's impossible to measure what level of awareness you'veraised for that.
0:10:26
And that's very cool.
0:10:27
The other big kind of crazy moment was when I got this very official letter inthe Post one day with like the US Embassy logo on it. I thought, what's thisall about? And I opened it up and it was a stamp sealed envelope and inside wasan invitation to go to the State Department in Washington DC and actuallymoderate the panel at the Our Ocean Conference all about marine pollution.
0:10:49
I was like, oh wow, this is cool. Not only are people in all these flat-flungcorners watching us and doing what we asked them to do, but so are the bigwigs.That was pretty cool. That's very cool. Did you go? Yeah, I went. And it waswhen Barack was president, so I'm sitting there and I basically presented andmoderated a session in front of 140 world leaders and it was mind-blowing. MetLeonardo DiCaprio, all these celebrities, it was unreal.
0:11:15
Yeah, as you do. Did you hold it together or did you get stage fright? BecauseI once met a bloke from an environmental charity who was also a model and hewas just so good looking and so into all of the things that I'm into that Iactually genuinely forgot how to breathe, I forgot my own name and it was themost embarrassing moment of my life,
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easily.
0:11:33
So did you manage to hold it together in front of Leonardo DiCaprio?
0:11:35
I did, I've got this trait and I think it's a good trait, but sometimes it letsme down, where I wait until the last minute to formulate. If I'm getting up onstage, for example, and I'm presenting a keynote or I've got to have openingremarks,
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I'll leave it so late in the piece to actually put all the little dotstogether. And so with this one, it was the night before and I was sweatingbecause I was about to open up this presentation, opening remarks, and I endedup calling them out. So the conference is called Our Ocean. It's still one ofthe most successful ocean conservation gatherings
0:12:11
on the calendar. But I got up on stage and I said, we call this Our Ocean, butit's not Our Ocean. This ocean belongs to no one in this room. It belongs tothe incredible biodiversity of life. So basically, the NARFers realised, shit,I just got invited to represent this thing and I just canned them completely.But actually, I still stand by it. I don't say our ocean, I say the ocean.
0:12:37
Yeah. No, our ocean is, I guess, like our planet. Well, I suppose it is and itisn't. It sort of implies ownership, but also ownership, responsibility. Yeah,I suppose it depends how you look at it. But I think they, I suppose, if you'renot honest when you're there, right?
0:12:53
What's the point?
0:12:54
Yeah, you'll get people talking about you regardless.
0:12:56
Yeah, yeah, very true. And that's how I always lead a speaking event too.People have been chasing me for a presentation that I've got in a few days formonths and I'm like, yeah, guys, I'm not writing a presentation two monthsbefore an event. I'm writing it the day before and I know that's annoying, butthat is what it is. Operating in the ocean plastic world is goddamnfrustrating, horrifying, heartbreaking, terrifying,
0:13:18
all of the above, right? What's the worst thing you ever saw or were mostfrustrated by, rather?
0:13:24
Oh gosh, I mean, initially it was just sort of those crazy sites that I sawwith my own eyes. You know, we can just Google now and see the most incredible,horrific sites or follow the ocean clean up and they show those rivers justflowing down, they put their interceptor barriers in. We can see all that stuffnow but going and seeing it with my own eyes in those early years wasdefinitely huge. Going and sailing to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, I didthat in 2011, that was wild because I was with scientists who helped meunderstand that there is no floating islands of trash.
0:14:02
There's not these big elaborate concoctions. It's actually a plastic smog. Sobecause we were doing the science and I'm out there putting the pieces togethergoing, oh right, so that tiny little manta trawl sample that we just put in thewater for a mile has all these little particles, but the ocean's this big andI'm sailing across it for three weeks.
0:14:21
There was moments like that that have just been constantly mind-blowing, butI'll say a recent one. Bloody watching the Olympics and seeing everyonedrinking plastic water bottles. I think there was only one occasion when I sawmaybe like the Australian skateboarder and they had their reusable bottle,everyone else is just getting passed plastic bottle after plastic bottle.
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I'm like, it's 2024 people! I know it's a disgrace and of course they have oneof their biggest sponsors is frickin' Coca-Cola. And Coca-Cola, oh yeah, we'repromoting reuse at this Olympics. They were filling their reusable cups fromsingle-use bottles. Guys, sometimes I think I'm going insane.
0:14:58
I really feel it, man. Like, I mean, we just had so much momentum in the lastsort of seven, eight years, six, seven, eight years. And then, gosh, the lastfew, it's got harder and harder. And I know you live and breathe this everyday, but yeah, we should be so much more progressive than what we are.
0:15:14
We should, but I choose to take this sort of dip as a positive because I refuseto be depressed about it, right? So we've got this move to the right, and Ihate even categorising it like that, right? Why have we decided we're eitherright or left? It's such a stupid, single way of looking at people, and peopleare not like that, and that's just how we've managed to create division. Soputting that aside, but we've swung to the opposite side in many countries,right? And environmental laws are being, well, certainly in Aotearoa, we aregetting rid of as many
0:15:45
environmental laws as humanly possible. But what is good is that it is aninciting rage, right? And also the way this government is currently treatingour indigenous, our Māori, it's fraught, but it is getting the everyday personto get more involved. I think that's really important because at the end of theday, consumer power and people are far more powerful than governments becauseat the end of the day, they're supposed to represent us.
0:16:11
So whilst, yeah, we're doing badly in quite a few places around the world atthe moment, I choose to believe this is sort of a temporary dip where peoplestart to realize that actually this idea of living in harmony with nature andbeing that little bit more environmentally friendly is not some bizarreprogressive ideal. It's actually A, necessary, and B, totally possible. Butmaybe that's just relentless optimism.
0:16:35
Certainly motivates me in a big way to really lean into businesses as asolution, right? Because I just think that, and we have this as part of oursort of founding principles of OIO, that sustainability just can't keep beingseen as a cost or a compromise. Sustainability is profitability. So when I lookat these times and these periods where I see a little bit of frustration inpeople being seemingly less engaged in these issues, I'm like, oh, you knowwhat?
0:17:06
They just need to be sustainable without even knowing it. And that's wherebringing in those solutions that they adopt in their everyday lives that arefar, far lower impact is so motivating for me.
0:17:19
Totally, which segues nicely into our next conversation about OIO, Ocean ImpactOrganisation. I find that hard to say.
0:17:26
You're the only one.
0:17:27
So I'm going with OIO because you're right, sustainability is an opportunity,in my opinion, right? It's an opportunity for businesses to not only do theright thing and they feel good about it and therefore that leads toopportunities with customers and employees. But it is an opportunity to standout from the crowd in so many ways and become more
0:17:45
profitable because studies have shown that socially and environmentally awarebusinesses do better for longer. So tell us more about OIO because I know thisis where your passion lies. What do you do and how do you help these organisationsand how do you find them?
0:17:59
Yeah. we help startups and entrepreneurs increase their impact and grow inscale. So we do that through innovation programs, support packages, andultimately funding. So we've been going for four years now. We started withreally cool programs like the one was called the Ocean Impact Pitch Fest, wherewe said, hey, if you're working on a business or a solution that is positivelyhelping the ocean, then we want to know about you.
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And so we went and raised a bunch of money from philanthropy and corporates,and we offered it up as prize money. And we've been doing that now for fouryears, and it's been epic. Over 1,500 startups from around the world
0:18:41
have applied to our various programs. And in terms of those that we've eithergiven prize money to or invested in or put through our support programs. It's99 so far. So it's kind of mind-blowing that there is that many awesome peoplewith great ideas who've, you know, got runs on the board but haven't smashed itout of the park yet and need a lot of support, need a lot of exposure, needfunding and yeah it's just
0:19:09
awesome. The thing I love about it most of all is that I've gone from being atraditional environmental campaigner and activist to just felt like I wasalways fighting. I was fighting for a better outcome, fighting for change,surrounded by a bit of that naturally negativity and frustration. You go overto this startup accelerator incubation space and you're surrounded by peoplewho are like, I'm doing it, I can do it, I'm going to take down the big guy.
0:19:38
So they're positive, they're optimistic, and they're so motivated. So just froma sort of eco-anxiety and mental health perspective, I bloody love what I do.It's awesome.
0:19:49
Yeah. When you spend all your time with climate scientists, you tend to beslightly depressed, shall we say. But absolutely, startup world is megaoptimistic. And there are so many amazing solutions out there and more beingdeveloped by the day. And I love that you're just supporting them to grow, which
0:20:03
is kind of what we're trying to do in another aspect of my life, right? And youknow, hopefully we will work together in some way. Who are your favouriteorganisations that you've worked with? Can you name a few? Or is it sort of alittle bit not allowed to have a favourite child?
0:20:18
No, there's been so many. It's lovely to watch this, a bit of the evolution, Isuppose, in those four years since we've been designing and running ourcampaigns and programs. And we're definitely getting more and moresophisticated as our years progress. So, I mean, I love one that was the winnerof PitchFest
0:20:38
in 2021, Seaforest, is actually a fantastic guy, Sam Elson, who not dissimilarto me and many others, sort of had that call to action that, ‘aha’, I've got todo something and maybe I have the means to do it. And his ‘aha’ came when hemet Professor Tim Flannery and discovered that, you know, you could feed cattleand other ruminants like sheep,
0:21:04
you could feed them these tiny amounts of a certain type of seaweed andsuddenly this strange process which makes them emit ginormous amounts ofmethane could be rectified because you're changing the biological processesinside them. So basically you feed a cow this small amount of asparagopsisseaweed and it reduces its methane output by 98% and so he's like okay that'sawesome so who is actually out there growing the seaweed and
0:21:30
feeding it to the cattle? No one. So he's like all right I'm gonna stop being afashion designer. Admittedly he was a sustainability fashion designer and hejust pivoted completely and did that and he's killing it. He's doing really,really good work. Fast forward to last year's Ocean Impact Accelerator Programcohort. I really love the guys from Hulbot.
0:21:50
Hulbot have basically got a deep tech company. They call it the world's mostsophisticated underwater drone. So it's this crazy underwater remote operatedvehicle, but they've harnessed its first capability to scrub the hulls ofboats. And they did this because they were in Sydney Harbour, they were aroundthe sailing community and they figured that people were out there scrapingthese boats to get rid of the biofoul
0:22:18
or they're dry docking them and stripping it back and then putting on thishorribly toxic anti-foul paint, which is so bad for biodiversity and a massivesource of micro plastic pollution, nanoplastics. So they've retrofitted thisrobot to clean boat hulls. The massive upside is no anti-foul paint, no need toget out there and manually do this stuff, but it reduces the drag. So they'venow got multi-million dollar contracts with ferry fleets saying,
0:22:45
hey, instead of using all this anti-foul paint, all this manual labour, justget us to get our robots to clean your boats every week or whatever. So they'rereally cool. We've had some really fascinating ones coming out of science. Sowe do a lot of work in getting right into the scientific space and saying,right, if these researchers have got brilliant ideas, we do not want them tostay in the lab. They have to get out and reach market traction. So one we gotfrom the States last year called AzulBio. Fascinating scientists who figuredout that you can
0:23:16
actually understand the microbiology of corals and just like you can change thegut microbiome in a human, you can actually enhance the microbiology of coralsto make them more resilient to changing ocean conditions, acidity, heat. Ohgod, that's good to hear. Yes, they're doing incredible stuff to do that.There's a zillion others, I could be here all day. But we've got a tab on thewebsite called Startups
0:23:43
and everyone who's come through our programs is listed. And we've often gotpitch videos on our YouTube and you can just go and do a little deep dive andgo, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, they're awesome. They're even better. It's prettycool.
0:23:56
I'll pop the website in the show notes too.
0:23:58
What other trends do you see going on? Because with each cohort, do you seespecific trends? I don't know whether they're focusing on plastic pollution orcoral or biodiversity or do you see trends? And if so, what do you think we'regoing to look at in the future?
0:24:11
It's more the trends that probably we're shaping. So as we get a bit moresophisticated and mature and the global... So OIO when we started in 2020, wewere sort of pretty unique and we were part of only a sort of handful oforganisations saying, hey, we believe supporting innovation and start-ups inthis ocean health domain is going to blow up. Fast forward to 2024, there is alot more happening,
0:24:36
but it seems very concentrated in Europe, and it seems quite concentrated inNorth America and other sophisticated markets. Not a lot is happening in thePacific and Australasia or even Southeast Asia. So our trends are saying, youknow what,
0:24:49
we're not going to try and compete with Norway or compete with the US. We aregoing to get stronger in our patch down here in Australasia. So we're gettingmuch more focused, making sure that the startups that are coming into ourprograms either want to enter the marketplace down here, see opportunities, orthey're from here.
0:25:09
This next cohort that we're bringing out to the Accelerator program will have acouple of Kiwi startups in it, which is super exciting. And we've established acouple of really key strategic relationships to make sure that startups thatwe've supported have got really good inroads
0:25:24
into the industry where they can ultimately find customers and really getmarket share. So yeah, that's probably the bigger trend that I'd refer to.
0:25:33
Yeah, awesome.
0:25:34
Okay, what is your ultimate aim for OIO?
0:25:37
We gave ourselves three big objectives from the day we opened the door. Wesaid, hey, we're going to support 100 start-ups in the next five years andwe've done that. We're at 99 now and that'll go, tick over to 106 very soon. Wesaid that we want to be responsible for seeing $100 million worth of investmentcoming into this ocean health innovation space.
0:25:58
We're only about $1.4 million towards that target and we've got great momentum,but market conditions are a touch challenging for that stuff at the moment, forearly stage investing. But every little piece of the chess board is in placefor us to really lean into that and start to raise some big capital in the nearfuture.
0:26:18
But the third one, and the one I'd really sort of put out there is that we wantAustralia and the Asia-Pac region to pivot to be real leaders in this space.Because particularly if you're an environmentalist like I am and you're fromAustralia and you look at how we currently get told that the backbone of theAustralian economy and all this land of opportunity is essentially digging upreally bad stuff, chucking it on a ship,
0:26:42
selling it to the highest bidder and ultimately choking the planet. And that'spretty crummy and that to me is an inexcusable state of play for the future. SoI really want to see this idea of a sustainable blue economy and harnessing theopportunities of the marine estate. And this doesn't just mean using theocean's resources for gain. It's actually tackling some of the biggestchallenges we face by seeing the ocean as
0:27:07
a source of opportunity. So that to me is my ultimate goal. And if I get there,then I'll be as contented a human being and environmentalist as I could everpossibly imagine because prosperity is abundant around this space and I want tosee a lot of people make a lot of money. I want to see a lot of people make alot of impact and I want to change the game.
0:27:27
So there you go. That just came out.
0:27:29
I like it.
0:27:30
It was bloody brilliant. It's sort of counter to the argument that you can'thave an environmentalist who also supports businesses doing well and makingmoney. But that's exactly what we want, is businesses to make money while doinggood. Profit is not a dirty word.
0:27:45
Who are your heroes? It's such a trite question, but I always like finding outmore people to go and emulate.
0:27:52
Yeah, so many. Just people that just do stuff. So I mentioned Dave Rastovichbefore, and I actually spent some time with Dave Rastovich at this off-siteactivity I was doing last week. And he was like a professional surfer who justhad the world at his feet, could
0:28:09
have just gone and done anything like living that life of luxury surfing wavesaround the world. But he decided to use his platform to just talk about bigthings and lean into them. So I love people like that. I love people likeProfessor Tim Flannery who I mentioned before who just so stoic in the face.Like you mentioned climate scientists before, like those people that I've justthey know so much about the state of play but they harness hope and optimism asa tool to take them through. Sylvia Earle, Attenborough, yeah there's a
0:28:47
zillion more but those are the ones that come to mind. Yeah, I know it's one ofthose questions
0:28:51
is actually I just panic immediately when asked because there's just too many.There are so many people doing amazing things and so many people you don't knowdoing amazing things. Okay, I'm going to Google Dave Rastovich.
0:29:01
Dave Rastovich, yeah. He's not on social media. He's a bit of a cruiser. Howcan I stalk people? Well, he does have a podcast. Him and his wife have onecalled The Water People Podcast. So you do get to hear Dave's perspectives onthat. So yeah, the Water People podcast is where you can hear some of his wackywisdom.
0:29:22
Okay, right.
0:29:24
And we're nearing my favourite question, which is always my last question ofthe day. But first, what can people do to do better for our oceans?
0:29:35
This is the action side of the podcast. Yeah, we use this messaging that I'vealways used for a really long time is, you know, we live on planet ocean, notplanet earth, and you know, I've got a podcast coming out soon on our OceanImpact podcast with a guy who wrote a book called Deep Water, James Bradley.It's so on this sort of train around like, the ocean is bloody everything. Likewe have somehow, it's a fallible part
0:30:06
of our human condition is that we only look at the land and the space that weoccupy and rely upon. But the ocean is, it's everything. It's where the vastmajority of habitable space on our planet is, it's where life came from. Imean, we just discovered recently
0:30:22
that oxygen is being produced 4,000 meters down in the ocean on littlemanganese nodules by little electrocharged rocks. I mean, come on, we know solittle about the ocean. For all we know, we could be being controlled by crazycritters that live down there in the deep sea. You just don't know this stuff,right?
0:30:42
I really hope the MIG's still around. I know, I know. I don't really believethat it is, but I wish that it was.
0:30:48
So for me, what I'm getting at in a very long-winded way is that if we couldjust acknowledge and respect that the ocean is the centre of this beautifulplanet that's made life possible, then we could make those decisions. And you,listening in, can make those decisions with the ocean in mind. So whetherthat's the options of the food that you're bringing into your home, think aboutwhere they've come from, particularly seafood, like we've got to understand theneed to get more traceability and insight into where our
0:31:17
seafood comes from. Of course, it's packaging and thinking downstream to wherethis stuff goes once you've got it, where it came from in the first place. Soyeah, just put your little blue lenses on and try and make some more decisionsin your everyday life with the ocean in mind and things will get a whole lotbetter.
0:31:35
Yeah, we do focus on individual actions but it's really more a mindset shiftbecause when you change that, you look at everything just a little bitdifferently. But sometimes for people who do that, they do take that firststep. Yeah, good call. Right, before we ask my favourite and last question,where can people learn more about the newest cohort?
0:31:54
Yeah, best to just go to our website, ocean-impact.org or get on the newslettersubscription. We'll make the announcement there or across our social channels.And yeah, that'll be really nice to bring these new awesome startups to lightand to show the world, I guess, that next little step in our journey. Becauseas I said before, we're always maturing and evolving the way that we supportand invest in these great startups.
0:32:20
I'm very excited to see who they are.
0:32:21
Okay, final question. Are you ready? ready. If you were supreme global overlordand you had all the power to do something that you needed to do, you don't havesupernatural powers, someone asked me about it the other day, what would be thefirst thing you would do to make the world a better place?
0:32:35
I think the High Seas Treaty and the push to protect 30% of the oceans and thebroader planet by 2030, I just really, really like that because when it comesto the ocean, so much stuff happens out of sight and therefore out of mind. Ifwe can somehow get this global agreement to pause the industrialisation of thesea and that might then limit things like deep sea mining at the same time andall this incredible stuff around illegal and unreported fishing and terriblethings that happen on the sea, it just would give us a chance for the oceanjust to bounce back.
0:33:22
Like I'm so fortunate where I live on the east coast of Australia, we've gotthe humpbacks moving up and down the coast at the moment. And that's an exampleof where you press pause, you stop doing something bad like culling whales andnature just bounces back with this beautiful response and I want us to be ableto do that before we lose more beautiful biomes and organisms. So yeah I'd justget the 30 by 30 protections in place and get the high-seas treaty up.
0:33:53
Maybe I'll get a global plastics treaty while I'm at it too. What else can wethrow in there? Or just ban it out right? You're the supreme overlord, right?Yeah. But I'm also practical. This is the thing, right? You know, I'm moving onin what we were saying before about how some environmentalists really strugglewith the concept of, you know, being a conscious capitalist. They want to moveto some other structured model.
0:34:17
I think you had someone on the podcast recently speaking to this. Like, you'vegot to be practical about this. We live inside a framework, but these arethings that a lot of people have done a lot of hard work on and all they needis a few more signatures and we can actually see them change. So I would be theone to you know, grab people's hands and scribble their signatures and thenmove on to the next one. I get them in whatever way you needed to.
0:34:39
30 by 30 would be game-changing. I spoke to this week's episode that's justgone live. It was with the CEO of WWF New Zealand and she talks a lot about 30by 30. And I find it absolutely flabbergasting that it's not a thing alreadybecause it just has all of the positives and bugger all negatives, right? Butof course, you've got to get governments around the world to agree. And NewZealand protects, I think, about 1% or less than 1% of our coastline, and we've
0:35:07
got the fifth largest ocean sort of area.
0:35:10
It's just, God, it's frustrating. Yeah and especially when you realise thatsome of that pushback from these industries, I mean if they can see the bigpicture there's huge upsides and benefits. Sure there'll be a little bit ofpain for that gain but this is the problem. Global fisheries are so subsidisedby governments all around the world. These people are losing money to go andlike just pillage the seas. It just it makes no sense. No and that's why 30 by30 would be beneficial for them, right?
0:35:39
Because they don't make money. I don't remember the figure, but the subsidiesthat globally are paid to fisheries, the ones that are particularly out in thedeep oceans, are huge because they're so far from productive it's not funny.And yet if you did protect 30%, they would receive a natural uplift. I find itbaffling that this is a hard thing to comprehend.
0:35:58
The recalibration required in so many sectors, like I mentioned Australia'sreliance on fossil fuels and minerals. We know these things are going torecalibrate and readjust for the future. What can we do to get some leadershipnow which just sort of rips the band-aid off a little bit faster? I know that'sscary if you're impacted by these changes but the inevitability is so evident,we have to just move faster.
0:36:22
The only constant is change and it's not survival of the fittest, it's survivalof who can adapt more than anything. Sorry, Darwin, I'm not saying you'rewrong, I'm just tweaking it slightly.
0:36:34
That's awkward.
0:36:35
He's not here to critique you.
0:36:37
No, this is very true. But we do, we do need to adapt and we do need to adaptmuch, much quicker. Well, that is the end of my questions. Is there anythingelse? Tips on how to surf? I've surfed twice, loved it.
0:36:48
Yeah, I mean, you've got to respect the ocean. You get that from your divingand other experiences that you have on the ocean, right? Like you can't justclick your fingers and become a surfer. It's a deep, long and awesomerelationship with the ocean. I'm constantly learning. My surfing is actuallybetter now than it has been in other parts of my life.
0:37:06
So persistence definitely pays off.
0:37:08
Yes, definitely.
0:37:09
Yeah, it is something that I think we also need to concentrate on too asyounger people having access to the ocean in a more positive way. I don't know,there's lots of organisations like Young Ocean Explorers here in Aotearoa.There's a few organisations going on that are trying to concentrate on that. Ithink that'll shift the needle too.
0:37:24
Yeah, ocean literacy. We're not going to protect the ocean until we really knowand love the ocean.
0:37:31
Yeah, you're dead right. The amount of money that goes towards it in comparisonto how important it is is laughable. But here we are. Thank you for joining me,Tim. That was really interesting, a really good insight into how to, you know,if you were thinking about starting your own non-profit or grassroots organisation,how to actually
0:37:48
get it going because you can't argue that what Take 3 has done and what the OIOhas done and continues to do is pretty bloody impressive. Next week, we are duefor another This or That where I talk you through sustainable swaps and otherthings that may not be as sustainable as you think. See you next week. Kia ora.
0:38:07
And there you go.
0:38:08
I hope you learned something and realised that being green isn't abouteverything in your pantry matching with those silly glass jars
0:38:15
or living in a commune.
0:38:16
If that's your jam, fabulous. But sustainability at its heart is just using what you need. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't keep it to yourself and feel free to drop me a rating and hit the subscribe button. and feel free to drop me a rating and hit the subscribe button. Kia ora and I'll see you next week.
