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About our guest

Leo Rayman is the founder & CEO of EdenLab (edenlab.co) and the former Chief Executive Officer at Grey Consulting, where he led corporate innovation and transformation programs. His main focus is to make sustainability something that leaders and customers want to do, and to how, through communications and marketing, we can make sustainability more engaging and exciting. He is working with company managements to reinvent their businesses successfully.

Highlights of the Episode

2:40 About EdenLab: https://www.edenlab.co/whoweare

8:15: about EdenLab helping companies make money while fixing the planet

9:10: about the difficulties of putting a degrowth meeting in the diary of company managements

22:02: about the difference of the atmosphere of a climate tech conference and a sustainability conferences

24:45: about why sustainability communication often fails and how it could be made to stick.

25:55: about John Marshall pioneering simple climate messages: https://www.ted.com/speakers/john_marshall

26:30: about why we should be talking about energy security and comfort, instead of grid flexibility and kilowatt hours

29:07: about presenting sustainability as a co-benefit to make impact 

30:47: about the innovation dilemma of large companies, as explained by Clayton Christensen, https://www.christenseninstitute.org/theory/disruptive-innovation/

31:20: about what the food system will be like in 2036?

31:55: about living the new frugal experience and on future back thinking

36:30: quiz of the day: thoughts about the key words with the 6th letter of the alphabet, ‘F’:

• Fossil fuel
• Fast fashion
• Full cost pricing

37:12: about living off the back of ancient sunshine instead of today's sunshine

37:30: about reframing fashion through vintage

38:48: about the National Bureau of Economic Research on the real cost of carbon:  https://www.nber.org/papers/w32544

About the social cost of carbon: https://www.rff.org/topics/scc/

https://www.energymonitor.ai/features/could-the-global-cost-of-climate-change-really-be-six-times-worse-than-thought/

39:26: about the proposed carbon take back obligation: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/12/fossil-fuel-producers-must-be-forced-to-take-back-carbon-say-scientists

42:06: about living in the period of ‘in the Meanwhile’

42:50: about the film ‘Power Station’: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt38567062/

43:55: about the role of street leads

44:42: about Copmitment, 52 threads of video discussions on climate positive actions: copmitment.com/actions

47:20: about the importance of thinking of an abundant positive future

48:52: about why individual regenerative resets make a difference

Thank you for listening to this episode of Ready, Steady, Green. If you liked it, make sure to follow it on your favourite podcast platform, share it with your friends and invite others to listen. Don't forget to visit our earlier episodes and feel free to send me a message: who would you like see as the next guest. Help us get the message through: We all ne

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Franzisca Weder is Professor in Organisational and Sustainability Communication at the Department of Business Communication at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria. She has over 20 years of experience in researching, writing and teaching in the areas of Organisational Communication and Public Relations with a specific focus on Sustainability Communication and Corporate Social Responsibility. Before joining the Department of Business Communication, Franzisca worked as Associate Professor at the University of Queensland in Brisbane and the University of Klagenfurt.

Highlights of the episode:

5:10: about the age of polycrisis

17:20: about Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion and the Last Generation

20:15: YOUGOV research about global sustainability scepsicism:  https://yougov.com/articles/46714-more-than-half-of-global-consumers-are-skeptical-of-a-brands-sustainability-claims

23:30: about the changing role of Corporate Social Responsibility and ESG

25:20: about affording to be sustainable

30:22: about throwing away an empty jam jar

33:30: link to book chapter on climate journalism: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003044253-39/sustainable-journalism-crisis-casey-fung-franzisca-weder

34:50: about the importance of having opinionated journalism

36:55: about how to step on students’ toes and make teaching ‘really different’

37:30: link to paper: Still Watching From the Sidelines? The Case for Transformative Environmental Communication Scholarship | International Journal of Communication https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/20507

39:30, quiz of the day: thoughts about the key words with the 5th letter of the alphabet, ‘E’:

- emergency
 - ethical investment
 - ESG

46:40 about the university carbon balance and academics flying to conferences

48:02: about the importance of keeping asking questions

Thank you for listening to this episode of Ready, Steady, Green. If you liked it, make sure to follow it on your favourite podcast platform, share it with your friends and invite others to listen. Don't forget to visit our earlier episodes and feel free to send me a message: who would you like see as the next guest. Help us get the message through: We all need to act on sustainability now!

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Our guest for today is Filipe Machado Franca, a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, and Researcher at the Institute of Biological Sciences, Federal University of Pará, Brazil. Filipe is a native of Brasil, has a PhD in the science of tropical environments, and studies lives of the smallest insects to the largest tropical forests.

Highlights of the podcast include:

3:05: How does one become a researcher of tropical forests?

5:50: How to combine managing tropical fieldwork of 25 people with a university senior research fellow role at the University of Bristol

9:52: Fieldwork in Brazil, Ghana and Malaysia as UKRI’s Future Leaders Fellow

11:57: Tropical forests are not the lung, but the heart of the Earth! 

14:00 COP30: The uplift of indigenous voices vs fossil lobbyists hindering the roadmap

15:00: About talking to Mary Creagh, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State of the UK, Marina Silva, Minister of Environment and Climate Change of Brazil and Sonia Guajajara, Minister of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil

21:10: Urban wildlife surrounds us

22:55: ‘I think insects’

23.10: The importance of urban forests

25:30: link to the Amazonia book of Sebastiao Salgado book: https://amzn.eu/d/fFHbVd7

27:10: link to the museum of Amazonias museum with an exhibition of Sebastian Salgado, showing planting of 3 million trees, to turn bare land to a restored tropical forest: https://www.instagram.com/museudasamazonias/

30:00: The risks of planting non-native species, co-authored and published in Science: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aba2225

31:45 - lessons from the temperate climate: forest management in Sweden and Romania

36:28 Reacting to terms starting with letter ‘D’, the 4th letter of the alphabet:

• decarbonisation
• durability
• diversity

41:00: Day dreaming about the ideal world: mobilisation of individuals, accountability of governments, responsibility of businesses

43:50: It is a problem that scientists and politicians usually have different timeframes

46:30: Importance of water footprint

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Our guest for today is Professor Anne Robertson. Anne is a professor of ecology at the University of Roehampton in London. Water ecosystems are in the centre of her research and teaching, including topics like freshwater biodiversity in particular in groundwaters, the impact on freshwater ecosystems of disturbances such as climate change and monitoring and conservation of groundwater ecosystems.

Highlights of the podcast include

3:10: changing water qualities - changing expectations

6:30: state of our rivers globally

8:10: river contamination in Zambia: https://www.birdlife.org/news/2025/03/07/environmental-disaster-unfolds-in-zambia/

9:10: should industrialisation and pollution go necessarily hand in hand?

10:10: education, motivation and mobilisation to act on saving the environment

11:10: do we need another pandemic to reconnect with nature?

12:45: mindfulness and connecting with nature

14:35: Rights of Nature: https://www.garn.org/rights-of-nature/

https://www.lawyersfornature.com/blog/rights-of-nature-in-the-uk-from-vision-to-viability

17:08: about the River Ouse, Sussex: https://loveourouse.org/

18:22: guardians of rivers and AI driven sensors for citizen science

https://sheffield.ac.uk/news/cloud-based-ai-helps-reduce-river-pollution

19:58: More than Human - exhibition in the Design Museum, London: https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/more-than-human

21:00: worldviews on nature and the rights of nature movement

24:58: about the state of our groundwaters

26:30: where is our water coming from

30:42: Thirst, in Search of Freshwater  - exhibition of the Wellcome Collection, London  https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/thirst-in-search-of-freshwater

31:47: slowing down the water and setting fresh flowing rivers:

https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/nature-restoration-regulation_en

35:12: overstepping planetary boundaries: https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html

38:38: tension between the word sustainable and the word development

39:30: C letter words:

• Climate scepticism
• Carbon sink
• Collaboration
• COP movement

45:36: teaching sustainability and the problem with siloed education

48:00: taking up volunteering opportunities 

50:30: limiting one’s time on the screen and spending more time in nature

54:00: reducing your footprint, reducing your consumption

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Our guest for today is Ash Goddard. 

Ash is an experienced workshop facilitator and climate educator. He is Director of Climate Clarity whose mission is to raise awareness and empowerment around the climate and ecological crisis using mainly Climate Fresk workshops, and any other tools that effectively facilitate change.

Highlights and links of the episode:

3:30: One in every 25 participants at this COP 30 is actually a fossil fuel lobbyist: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/14/fossil-fuel-lobbyists-cop30

7:48: Recent Pew Research on notable dip of number of people concerned about climate change: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/08/19/global-climate-change-as-a-threat/

14:00: I find that when people come to these sorts of workshops, it can create quite a big shift in kind of culture or experience in ‘oh, I'm now a person who talks about climate change, I've had experience of a climate conversation.

18:28: Top climate action tips:

• Grantham Institute, Imperial: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/stories/climate-action/
• Take the Jump: https://takethejump.org/six-shifts-help
• Natural History Museum: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit/galleries-and-museum-map/fixing-our-broken-planet.html

21:10: Personally, I have a big dream of engaging my neighbours on my street in a food cooperative where we're purchasing from a wholesaler nice organic food,  at lower prices and then distributing on the street. 

27:05: Sometimes there's a bit of a veil up between us and the organisation when working at this level,  they might have a degree of secrecy or a level of keeping information private and not wanting to disclose too many secrets.

34:00: There were tears, there was guilt. There was a lot in the room of people wanting to have a living making the right thing and more. And I really appreciate that moment.

35:00: Rapid Fire Responses - letter ‘B’: 

• Belém
• Banks
• Biodiversity
• Behaviour change

42:00: on green skills, sustainability skills and learning: https://www.isepglobal.org/sustainability-skills-map/#thirteencompetencies

43:40: on Axa Climate School

https://axaclimateschool.com/

48:50 Taking the time to understand what are major risks in your area and sit down with family and friends and asking what is our plan here. Given everything that we know, are we actually acting at a proportionate level? 

49:35: recent news about the potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) where the UK might find sea ice down to Liverpool in the winter months: https://www.carbonbrief.org/ocean-current-collapse-could-trigger-profound-cooling-in-northern-europe-even-with-global-warming/

55:00: On the 27th of November, there's the National Emergency briefing in London aimed at high level decision makers, MPs and more.  Briefing from 10 experts on climate security, and covering topics across energy, economics, food systems, climate, tipping points and more:

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In this episode of Ready, Steady, Green! I talk to Attila Schillinger, Professor of Practice at the University of Oregon about youth climate awareness, the role of young people at COP30, the 10th anniversary of the Paris agreement, the importance of connecting global concerns to local actions, the changing role of ESG expectations, differences in interpretations of sustainability, the role of individuals, companies and governments in taking action, and daydreaming about the future. 

In the podcast, we refer specifically to:

4:00: Oregon and the outdoors

4:34: Climate is not among the top 5 concerns for many people around the world: https://www.ipsos.com/en/what-worries-world

8:53: Talking to students on how the IPCC currently assesses status of the world: AR6 Synthesis Report

11:35: Forest fires, floodings and insurance premiums

13:40: Different interpretations of sustainability are one of the causes of problems

14:27: Sustainability: journey or destination?

16:53: Who should be taking action on climate change?

18:10: Climate action: sticks vs carrots?

21:50: Campaign to stop people from idling car engines

24:11: Fight climate change with climate change!

25:04: Air travel, air conditioning, activism and arts

28:45: Has ESG passed its golden years?

31:30: How to match growing distrust in COPs (https://www.ipsos.com/en/cop30) and growing hope in youth taking a leading role?

33:15: About missing leadership from the global climate movement

42:50:  Technology building social media and AI, instead of carbon capture solutions - using the wrong amplifiers https://www.humanetech.com/

48:10: Distinguishing between wants and needs, changing habits, education - a range of things individual could do about climate change. Follow your own carbon track here: https://www.earthhero.org/

51:35: Companies addressing climate change through capacity building. This is a moral imperative combined with drive for profitability

56:20: Governments: regulations, reporting and beyond