Earth Your While

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What does it take for a business to be genuinely good for its people, its community and the planet, and how can it keep getting better?

On this episode of Earth Your While, Jack and Ellie meet Laura Slack, founder of Planet & Purpose, a UK-based B Corp and impact consultancy. After 15 years in the police, Laura found a new way to help people: supporting purpose-driven businesses with B Corp certification and impact strategy.

B Corp standards have changed, bringing a stronger focus on meeting requirements across impact areas and continuing to improve after certification. Laura explains what the process involves, why it takes commitment from across a business, and how it can help embed purpose into everyday decisions. She also shares why profit and purpose can go hand in hand, and what businesses stand to gain by changing how they operate.

Topics covered include:

•  Laura’s journey from police detective to impact consultant
• What B Corp certification involves and how it helps businesses improve
• How the new standards strengthen accountability and ongoing progress
• The time, cost and commitment required to become and remain certified
• How to embed purpose into business culture and everyday decisions
• Why purpose and profit can support long-term business success

Music by Stock_Studio from Pixabay. 

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Cardboard boxes protect products on their way to us, but many are crushed and recycled after just one use. What if more of them could be used again?

On this episode of Earth Your While, Jack and Ellie meet Marty Metro, founder and CEO of UsedCardboardBoxes.com, the US counterpart to Reuseabox. Marty has spent more than two decades building a business around a deceptively simple idea: match the boxes one company no longer needs with another company that can use them.

The challenge is making reuse work at scale. Boxes vary in size, quality and quantity, and the right supply has to meet the right customer in the right place at the right time. Marty shares how technology helps solve that puzzle, how his early venture nearly sank, and what it takes to turn a promising idea into a growing business.

Topics covered include:

• Why so many usable boxes are crushed after a single trip
• How UsedCardboardBoxes.com connects box suppliers with businesses that need them
• The surprising logistics behind making reuse work at scale
• Marty’s journey from an early business setback to building a company with nearly 200 employees
• Why execution, adaptability and hiring the right people matter
• How businesses can make reuse easier to adopt alongside new packaging

Music by Stock_Studio from Pixabay. 

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What if a gift card could do more than give someone a choice of present - it could introduce them to brands doing business better?

On Earth Your While, Jack and Ellie speak with Paul Zhu, co-founder and CTO of EcoSwap, a multi-store digital gift card featuring sustainable brands. Paul explains how his experience in engineering and an earlier startup led him to focus on shifting consumer behaviour, and why he sees gifting as a way to direct demand toward businesses with better practices.

Topics covered include:

• The surprising scale of the gift-card market-and the money left unspent
• Can a sustainable gift card really change what people buy?
• How EcoSwap chooses better brands without expecting perfection
• Why being "eco" isn't enough: making sustainable shopping cool
• The persistence it takes to win over big-name brands
• Can we build a thriving economy within planetary boundaries?

Music by Stock_Studio from Pixabay. 

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We all know that disposable nappies are convenient, but they create mountains of waste. We know switching to reusable nappies is better for the planet, however, it can feel like one more thing for busy parents to manage.

On the latest episode of Earth Your While, Jack and Ellie talk to Elisabeth Whitebread, founder of NappyLoop, about making reusable nappies easier for families by bringing them into nurseries. Elisabeth shares how her work in environmental campaigning and her own experience as a parent led her to create a nursery-first nappy subscription service, and why making sustainable choices easier matters more than making parents feel guilty. 

Topics covered include:

• Elisabeth’s journey from conservation campaigning to nappies
• Why parents often find reusable nappies difficult to adopt
• How NappyLoop’s nursery and commercial laundry model works
• Designing a cotton nappy for nursery staff and high-temperature laundering
• The environmental impact of disposable nappies and “compostable” claims
• How reusable nappies may support toilet training
• Elisabeth’s vision for making cloth nappies a mainstream option for families

Music by Stock_Studio from Pixabay. 

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Ultra‑processed food, exhausted soils and a warming planet are all symptoms of a food system that forgot how nature works.

On Earth Your While, Jack and Ellie talk to Tim Mead, organic farmer and owner of Yeo Valley, about the remarkable journey from a small mixed family farm to a household‑name organic brand. Tim shares how a tragic farming accident pushed him into leading the business, why he believes biology, not chemistry, should drive how we grow food, and how regenerative practices could help tackle both climate change and the health impacts of ultra‑processed diets.

Topics covered include:

• The Yeo Valley origin story and how Tim unexpectedly took over the family business
• Why ultra‑processed foods dominate our shelves and who’s really shaping our diets
• Organic vs regenerative farming – what they mean and why it matters
• The Yeo Valley Soil Carbon Project and how healthy soil can lock away carbon
• Why current food markets fail farmers and what needs to change
• Building a business “designed around nature”

Music by Stock_Studio from Pixabay. 

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On the latest Earth Your While, Jack and Ellie talk to Harriet Evans, co‑founder of Penrhos Spirits, the Herefordshire gin brand that became the first in the UK to move entirely into 100% recycled aluminium bottles.  

Harriet shares how two farming families went from £30,000 of wasted strawberries to a circular spirits business now on shelves in Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and international airports.  She explains why blueberries became their secret weapon for ultra‑smooth gin, how collaborating with Oddbox and other growers helps them rescue more wonky fruit and veg, and what it really took to ditch traditional glass for lightweight, endlessly recyclable aluminium.

They also discuss what it’s like working on farm in a year of drought, the realities of scaling a sustainable brand in a crowded gin market, and their growing commitment to farmer mental health.

Topics covered include: 

• How the gin was created from two farming families’ frustration with wasted fruit
• Why they switched entirely from glass to 100% recycled aluminium bottles to cut their carbon
• Their collaborations with Oddbox and other farms to turn surplus fruit and veg into gin
• The realities of running a distillery during droughts and extreme weather
• Supporting farmer mental health with help of the local community

Music by Stock_Studio from Pixabay. 

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What if a big part of climate action in healthcare starts with putting things in the right bin?

On Earth Your While, Jack and Ellie talk to Rufus Henderson, Sustainability Director at NuGreen, a B Corp‑certified consultancy born out of NHS waste research. 

In this episode, Rufus explains how NuGreen is helping hospitals, GP practices, schools and SMEs cut carbon and costs through better waste segregation, and how an Innovate UK project with Leeds Beckett University is transforming treated clinical waste into a low‑carbon construction material that could replace mined sand.

Topics covered include:

• How NuGreen grew from an NHS research project
• The process and promise of turning treated clinical waste into a sand‑like aggregate
• Why so much “infectious” clinical waste isn’t actually infectious
• What really happens to household recycling once it leaves your bin
• Behaviour, bin design and small nudges that change how people sort waste
• A realistic 10‑year vision for circular healthcare waste

Music by Stock_Studio from Pixabay. 

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What if the key to cutting your carbon footprint is hidden in your bookkeeping… and your accountant is the one holding it?

On Earth Your While, Jack and Ellie talk to Kathryn Frimond, bookkeeper, carbon literacy trainer and founder of The Sustainable Bookkeeper. Kathryn shares how she moved from saying yes to any client to working mainly with purpose‑led businesses, and why that values‑driven niche actually made it easier to grow.

She reveals how day‑to‑day accounting data can be turned into a credible carbon footprint in minutes, why SMEs are quietly responsible for up to half of UK business emissions, and how upcoming reporting standards could see unprepared small suppliers losing contracts.

Topics covered include:

• The true impact of SMEs on UK emissions
• What UK Sustainability Reporting Standards and scope 3 mean for small suppliers
• Simple, often free sustainability wins such as energy tariffs, pensions and banking
• What carbon literacy training is and how it changes behaviour inside businesses
• The quiet power accountants and bookkeepers have to shift client decisions
• Drawing ethical lines on who you work with and why that can accelerate growth

Music by Stock_Studio from Pixabay. 

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The real power to tackle the climate crisis isn’t in shiny new tech. It is in how we design, use and discard everyday material.

On Earth Your While, Jack and Ellie talk to Sam Reeve, CEO of Resource Futures, an independent, employee‑owned sustainability consultancy that’s been reshaping how the UK thinks about waste for nearly 20 years. From grassroots recycling projects in Bristol and Leeds to becoming one of the UK’s leading circular economy voices and a certified B Corp, Sam shares how the company grew out of three small disruptors and why collaboration is baked into its DNA.

Sam unpacks what decades of waste composition analysis really show about our bins, why behaviour change is as critical as infrastructure, and how data can guide smarter policy and business decisions.

Topics covered include:

• How three grassroots recycling organisations merged into Resource Futures
• What waste composition studies reveal about our recycling habits and “wishcycling”
• Why behaviour change, communication and systems thinking matter as much as technology in circular economy
• The biggest misconceptions about the circular economy
• What the UK’s new EPR rules really mean for brands, costs and packaging choices 
• Why some companies are scared to talk about their sustainability work – and how to avoid both greenwashing and greenhushing
• A realistic 10‑year vision for a more circular UK economy, and the role businesses, communities and policy all have to play

Music by Stock_Studio from Pixabay. 

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What if becoming a parent is one of the quickest ways into poverty even with a “good” job or thriving business?

On Earth Your While, Jack and Ellie talk to Grace Carter, entrepreneur, founder of The Metamorphose Group and campaigner behind End Parenting Poverty. After her second daughter’s birth in 2023, Grace was running a 15‑person agency while facing debt, a mental health crisis and clients walking away… just as the government was talking up “female entrepreneurship” but still underpaying new mothers.

Grace exposes how the system labels maternity pay a “health and safety payment”, keeps it far below the national living wage, and bakes discrimination against mothers into contracts, student loans and pensions. From multiple miscarriages and isolation as a leader to petitioning Parliament and giving evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee, she shares the personal cost and the policy shifts needed to end parenting poverty.

Topics covered include:

• Why we shouldn't accept statutory maternity pay being below the national living wage
• The hidden debt, mental health impacts and loneliness behind "doing it all"
• How self-employed women and founders fall through the cracks of maternity support
• Why flexible work, real empathy and lived experience leadership are good for business
• What happened when Grace's petition hit 100,000 signatures and reached Westminster
• Practical steps employers can take to help end parenting poverty

Music by Stock_Studio from Pixabay.