We have a special guest host, Ruth Read, Director of blooloop and greenloop, the leading annual conference focused on sustainability within the attractions sector. In this episode of Skip the Queue, she welcomes two special guests to explore climate action within attractions, what it looks like in practice, what is holding the industry back, and how practical steps can reduce risk and drive progress. She is joined by Vero Celis, CEO and Founder of Valumia and Sustainability Advisor at Skutek Consulting, who brings a strong focus on practical, data-driven approaches to sustainability, and Marie Rayner, Director of Project Development and Sustainability Lead at Storyland Studios, who works at the intersection of creative design and sustainable experience development.
In this Skip the Queue podcast episode, our guest host Ruth Read, Director of blooloop and greenloop, is joined by Vero Celis, CEO and Founder of Valumia and Sustainability Advisor at Skutek Consulting, and Marie Rayner, Director of Project Development and Sustainability Lead at Storyland Studios, to discuss sustainability in the attractions industry, focusing on practical climate action, key risks, and how small, data-driven steps can create meaningful progress.
Topics Discussed:
Show references:
Guest Host:
Ruth Read, Director at blooloop, the go-to source for attractions news and its sustainability platform greenloop.
Veronica Celis Vergara, CEO and founder of Valumia and Sustainability Advisor at Skutek Consulting
Marie Rayner, Director of Project Development and Sustainability Lead at Storyland Studios
Skip the Queue is brought to you by Merac. We provide attractions with the tools and expertise to create world-class digital interactions. Very simply, we're here to rehumanise commerce. Your guest host is Ruth Read.
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Credits:
Written by Emily Burrows (Plaster)
Edited by Steve Folland
Produced by Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle (Plaster)
Vero Celis: Even marginally better, even 1% better. Compound is, you know, thousands percent better in a couple of years.
Ruth Read: Hello, welcome to Skip the Queue. I'm your guest host, Ruth Read, director of blooloop, which is the world's most trusted source of news for the visitor attractions industry and Greenloop, our sustainability arm. On today's show, we're going to be talking all about climate action within attractions. So I'm joined by Veronica Sellis Vergara, who is the founder of Volumia and is bringing a strong focus on practical, data driven approaches to sustainability.
Vero Celis: We could potentially use them as labs to take and to test innovation that could be like incredibly exciting at a world scale, you know, at the scale of a city, at the scale of a country. Invite the public to be part of that discovery.
Ruth Read: And Marie Rayner, who's the director of project development and sustainability lead at Storyland Studios, who's working at the intersection of creative design and sustainable experience development.
Marie Rayner: I really see sustainability as being creative. Got these big challenges and the only way we're going to resolve them is by thinking creatively, by being innovative. And that's exactly what themed attractions.
Ruth Read: So thank you so much both for joining me. Before we dive in, tell us a bit more about yourselves. Vero, do you want to start?
Vero Celis: Sure, sure. By training, I'm an architect, but I turned very early on into like an impact tech entrepreneur. I obsessed with sustainability. Very, very early on. I would say, like way before it was cool. I'm originally from Chile, I've lived abroad, a bit of everywhere. Currently based in Spain, I have been blessed with doing a bunch of firsts in my career. Some of them have been very tied to sustainability. So I, for example, worked in the first LEED certified industrial building in Argentina. I created the first real time transparency platform for the use of donations, working with both environmental and social projects. And I had the blessing of doing the first ever sustainability metrics for the roller coaster manufacturer industry at Marel Rights as their chief Sustainability officer.
Vero Celis: That was before me founding Valumia, which focuses mostly on providing help with understanding environmental, social and governance risks tied to your supply chain.
Ruth Read: Thank you so much. And Marie, over to you.
Marie Rayner: Well, I mean I'm pretty much the opposite of Vero because I spent my whole life literally in the uk, no travelling to me at the moment I am the director of project development and the sustainability lead at Storyland Studios. So I've been working in the themed attractions industry for about three years now and before that, I worked in office design. So my previous company was really where my passion for environmental sustainability grew because we did a lot of work around space design and product design, lifecycle analysis and supply chains. And it's also where I was first introduced to things like LEED and sort of broader environmental standards. So when I joined Storyland, part of my role was to help implement a sustainability strategy, which anyone who's done it knows can be pretty challenging.
Marie Rayner: But I'm fortunate to work with an incredibly talented team. We have expertise in creative design and architecture and digital and that gives me a lot of knowledge to draw upon. So my main focus has been on structuring our processes and building out our reporting and really understanding how we can leverage the great work that we already do and to keep improving. Because at storyline we talk about lasting impact. So that's our term for a holistic approach to sustainability that looks at the whole picture. And a big part of that strategy is asking, how can we have a bigger lasting impact?
Vero Celis: Yes.
Marie Rayner: I genuinely love sustainability. I love being able to explore it through the lens of themed attractions and I'm really grateful to be part of this conversation today.
Ruth Read: Thank you so much. So I guess as well. I'm Ruth Read. I said I'm a director at blooloop, so my background is in marketing and then I went the other way and did a master's in climate sciences. And that's kind of where greenloop came from, I suppose. So we often hear attractions should be doing more on climate. I think a lot of people feel that they should be. What does actually doing more look like in practise? I mean, Marie, have you got any good examples? Is there anyone that you think is really leading the way?
Marie Rayner: Absolutely. I mean, we've been interviewing a lot of really amazing companies recently to sort of understand their climate journeys. And some that really stand out are Port Aventura because they are B Corp certified. They have got just some phenomenally interesting and forward thinking plans in place. And then Chester zoo, another sort of favourite of mine actually. The way that they approach conservation, the way their message is really embedded into everything they do is just fantastic.
Marie Rayner: And I think like Disney and Merlin and sort of the large operators are all doing really incredible things and it would be great if we could see some of the sort of initiatives that they have be rolled out with some of the smaller operators they'd like they could take maybe a mentoring role because some of the stuff they do is great, but it's really possible because they're to begin with.
Ruth Read: I guess a lot of the time they've got quite big Budgets compared to the smaller places. And it's quite easy to. It feels like they've got more bandwidth to do stuff, but, I mean, a couple of small ones that are doing really. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is doing a lot, I would say, as well. Andrew Anderson, he's doing loads of. Over there, I think the Natural History Museum as well. On the museum side, there's not lots that are doing really concrete stuff, but the Natural History Museum are doing loads. Biodiversity stuff they're doing in their gardens is really cool. But their new climate exhibition is fantastic. And I think, as far as I'm aware, it's the first exhibition that's really been measured from the ground up in terms of their carbon footprint.
Ruth Read: And they looked at their supply chain, which I know is hard. Vero, that's kind of what your specialty is looking at. But that was really cool. And yeah, I think there's a lot of. There's a lot of operators, but also some suppliers that are doing stuff too. And it's really. It's really nice. We, of course, need more to be done, but I guess it's how we get there, because a lot of people worry about killing the fun, I think, don't they? A lot of, you know, attractions are there to be enjoyed and provide a bit of escapism. So, Marie, how do you do it?
Marie Rayner: I feel like we look at generally people in general, we look at sustainability like it's. It's compliance focused in the similar way that maybe health and safety would be. Although a health and safety person might disagree. But, you know, it's kind of this. It's compliant, it's regulated, it's not necessarily that exciting. And so it, some reason then does contrast in a bad way with themed attraction that, like you say, is about joy and escapism. But actually, I really see sustainability as being creative. You know, we've got these big challenges and the only way we're going to resolve them is by thinking creatively, by being innovative. And that's exactly what themed attractions do. So it's almost like the perfect way to marry these things up.
Marie Rayner: We've got this amazing industry that is really fun and we shouldn't think that sustainability is going to somehow kill that, because it's not the best way. I can kind of explain it, I guess. I mean, I work for Storyland, right? So we're all about. All about the story, but if we're trying to embed, like, messages and action and that way of thinking into something that is more entertainment based, really, you just do it through story, because story is the foundation of engaging with visitors. People remember stories better than facts. You know, it's an emotional connection. It creates as. It just creates an experience that you really engage with.
Marie Rayner: So if you can embed sustainability into that story, and not necessarily in a super obvious way, but just so it's part of the narrative, then people just like, learn and absorb information as they go. So that education kind of happens in an. In a not over the top way. And then you are able to kind of feel like you're making decisions or understanding things at your own pace, in your own way, like making the choices that you want to make, rather than just being told something which is definitely not fun. An escapist is just. That is a bit dull and a bit boring. So I think, like, if you can find a way to really allow guests to discover something for themselves by embedding sustainability into a story, that goes a long way.
Marie Rayner: And then that story feeds into the design, it feeds into the rest of the guest experience and how that's mapped out across the park or an attraction. So it really, to us at Storyland, Story is the foundation of everything. And that's. And that's what we found is that trying to look at sustainability and other lasting impact objectives needs to be embedded into that story so that it does then genuinely flow through the entire concept, rather than it just being an isolated part of what we're trying to achieve.
Vero Celis: I think it also gives you how parks, for example, are structured. If we think only about parks and we think about this idea of building small worlds in each one of these parks, it gives you this idea and this freedom to test and try with what those different worlds would mean in a way that is super creative and that can. That can involve both like really old and really new technology to kind of like solve problems that we have at massive scales. But in a way, in the test tube, you know, we're not looking at whole cities, we're not looking at, you know, whole countries. We're usually looking at a relatively small space. Of course, their parks are huge, but they will never be as big as a city. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.
Vero Celis: But you know what I mean? If we take each one of these portions, we could potentially use them as labs to take and to test innovation that could be incredibly exciting at a world scale, at the scale of a city, at the scale of a country, and invite the public to be part of that discovery.
Ruth Read: Actually, that reminds me. So Chester Zoo is doing. I know, Marie, you mentioned them earlier. They're doing some really cool research at the moment about. Of course there's a lot of research about how get. Being in nature is really good for people's mental well being, but also their physical well being. But they're now doing some research into actually the impact of zoos and aquariums specifically, so engaging with animals in a natural environment. And I think that's a really good example of. It's not necessarily, you know, it's not more wellness than hardcore sustainability, but I think that's a really nice example of. Actually, you're right, Barry, that we can use these isolated environments to see the impact of different attractions on people and on environments.
Ruth Read: I think ZSL are doing some really good outreach stuff as well again on kind of community growing on the kind of ESG side of things. But I, I think there's a lot of really cool opportunities to do stuff and it can be. It can be building a new land and a new ip, but it could also be. I know efteling have, you know that their bins and their bins talk to you when you put rubbish. It's can be as small as that, can't it? That's a tiny little storey and character in a tiny little thing within a much bigger beautiful park. But it's. I think it's. You're right. There's so many opportunities and I guess that's maybe the point of what. Why we're having this conversation, isn't it? There's. It.
Ruth Read: It feels really doom and gloomy and there is of course a lot of doom and gloom, but there are some really good opportunities for innovation and, you know, economic opportunities too. Guests are moving away from less sustainable things. It's. Yeah, there could be a lot happening, I think that hopefully people are getting excited about and I think we're all really excited about. What are the biggest risks for attractions that don't take climate action seriously. I think there's lots we could talk about. But Ferro, what are the kind of. I guess maybe the top two or three.
Vero Celis: Well, I'm an architect and I did a master's in landscape and territorial design. So like this relationship of the built environment to the. What's happening in your landscape, you know, what's happening, for example, with natural disasters, how unreliable weather is becoming, how important it is to design parks, design structures, design attractions that will be able to face this type of new and, you know, up and coming unreliance. Right. Like I come from a country with earthquakes, with the strongest earthquakes in the world. So we kind of prepare like mentally. We grew up with this idea of emergency and moving out of my country, realised that it is not the case for other people. Right. It's not the case for other countries.
Vero Celis: Most people don't think about the emergency for us, like it's not a question of if we're going to have an earthquake, it's a question of when we're going to have it and how big it's going to be. So we prepare. We designed every structure, we designed everything that we built, prepared for that. Now we're moving into a world where, you know, climate disasters are more and more often are happening in places where they didn't before. So okay, knowing this, trying to do the switch from if something happens to preparing for when something happens. So you can have like the biggest, like the fastest pullback from the disaster. You can make sure that your guests are the safest they can be.
Vero Celis: You can make sure that your structures, that your infrastructure and your rights are the safest they can be. Because like I've seen some rides being in floods, they were not prepared for those floods. Right. So if we don't start thinking about this and being actively preparing for them, I think that's one of the biggest risks that we'll face. Like the erosion of the infrastructure that is so expensive to build and that we design with so much care, right?
Ruth Read: Yeah, absolutely. Marie, what do you think? Is there anything on the design side that you think is really, I don't know, needs to change?
Marie Rayner: Yeah, Storyland has an in house architecture team and we do design to lead standards. Not necessarily everything gets lead qualified but the team is so well versed in sustainable design that it just become embedded so we understand how to build sustainably now. But I think the point that Vera was making is that's not going to be the same forever. So it's not just about the effects of extreme weather on existing infrastructure. It's also about what is it going to, what will a theme park realist look like in 10, 20 years time? Because we're already seeing in places, I mean obviously somewhere like Abu Dhabi is super hot country anyway. So all their theme parks are inside for that reason.
Marie Rayner: But you know, will we need to start thinking about that in other areas of the world which aren't currently so hot, but are potentially going to be. So I think that the obvious shift in weather and the landscape is, should be a massive concern. I don't think that the industry is really thinking that far ahead. I guess we're all hoping a solution comes in place before that really happens. But the other aspect is the expectation of guests as well. So, you know, recent research is showing that there's a definite upturn in people wanting attractions and travel and leisure to be more sustainable. So if you don't evolve with that way of thinking, you are absolutely going to be losing customers to other competitors. Because if you don't really care about sustainability, it doesn't really matter.
Marie Rayner: But if you've got a guest base that really does, all it takes for them to change sort of their perspective on how well their guest experience has been is to see something that they fundamentally disagree with. And if it goes against your values, you don't want to go back to that park or that zoo or whatever it is. And so that is something that we need to be very conscious of. And you know, we need to be conscious of that in design and then also in operationally how that affects parks.
Vero Celis: Well, I think also one of the things that we should consider is like how sustainability, and I'm not just thinking about climate change, but sustainability understood as environmental, social and governance factors affect our ability to keep our parks alive based on like the disruptions of our supply chains. Like we're all seeing what's happening right now in the Middle east and how this affects or like political changes, political mood swings, if you will, like they have a direct effect on the costs that it has to operate a park, to operate a museum, to operate any kind of manufacturing facility because of the changes on this social fabric of the communities where our supply chains are distributed in.
Vero Celis: And I think if we're not looking at being able to measure, to be able to track and being able to understand where are those points that are at the biggest risk in our own supply chains, then we risk, you know, having our operations disrupted by a way that might be even like we may not even be able to operate anymore.
Ruth Read: I think as well there's, I guess going back to Marie's point about the, I guess more climate based things. So, you know, weather, flooding, earthquakes, climate disasters. I think maybe theme parks industry can learn a lot from museums and aquariums and zoos actually. I mean there's, if you look at what happened during, I think it was Covid. But also heat waves. When we get a heat wave, I've seen, you know, museums, libraries, civic centres opening their doors because they have cool buildings that are designed in a way to protect art, you know, and that's a nice example of Actually what guests need in certain points. And if you've got a theme park that's all outside and the weather is getting hotter or colder, to be fair, you know, how is that going to affect attendance?
Ruth Read: There was, I think it was a PJV report last year, made a really interesting point about. It was at the AZA conference, so a zoo and aquarium focused event. And they made a really interesting point that they're expecting really to see. I might be butchering this, but they were kind of suggesting that guests might be more focused towards aquariums because, of course, by nature aquariums are indoors and therefore they're cooler, they're protected from the heat and the rain, whereas zoos, again, by nature, are more outside. So I think there's an interesting thing that we could look at there from a theme park perspective to see actually, you know, that not only the infrastructure and the architecture and the engineering systems, but the people themselves, they're not going to fare well under extreme heat and extreme wet and cold.
Ruth Read: So, yeah, there's a lot of risks, but as we've said, there's a lot of really exciting opportunities. Vera, on the practical side, the data is, of course, you know, data is really important. We should lead with data. How can attractions start if they don't have the perfect sustainability data? If they're not measuring, if they're not reporting? Where, where do you begin?
Vero Celis: Honestly, like I always say, anywhere. Like, just start somewhere. Like, the biggest mistake is to wait to have perfect data. It's not about the data itself, is about, like, what, you know, defining a starting point, any starting point that can help you have better visibility. So all companies, whether they're operators, whether they're manufacturers, whether they're, you know, like operating a park, a museum, a library, you know, they have some data. Some, you know, a lot of the times, like, the easiest to access is like, whatever, what they're buying. Because, like, even if, like in the most basic and smallest operations, you still have to, you know, produce some sort of financial report for your taxes, right?
Vero Celis: So if you take that data that you already have inside, leveraging that data to understand where your suppliers are located, for example, or do they have like any patterns there? Is there, you know, any particular vulnerability that you can see just by, by looking at that data, like, you know, you don't have to be looking at all of it, you know, like, just take what you feel is the most relevant to your operation and start there.
Ruth Read: And I guess, is that another, I mean, could you also look at your bills and like your water, your electricity or that side of things as well, your front facing bills, because that's another, I guess everybody's paying, everyone hopefully is paying their bills. So everyone knows how much electricity they're using, right?
Vero Celis: Exactly. I'm pretty sure it's frowned upon if you don't pay your bills. So.
Ruth Read: I think so.
Vero Celis: So if you start with those things that we all do, regardless of what we're doing, and you use that small portion as like your starting point, it will give you so much clarity. I can tell you.
Ruth Read: We've skipped ahead a little bit. But you know, there are a lot of climate conversations happening that are focusing on guest facing initiatives. Marie, what sort of important quick wins are there in that way, do you think
Marie Rayner: In guest facing initiatives? I think what we need to consider is how does the guest facing initiative improve the guest experience? Because that's ultimately what any operator or any attraction wants to achieve, is a great guest experience. There are so many ways that we could do even just a little bit more and make a big impact. One of the things that I think is easy, but I mean, I've been told by our landscape architecture team it's not straightforward, I think is biodiversity. I think, you know, you can create biodiversity in a park really easily because you could plant trees or you could make a little habitat. You could use the space underneath solar panels, which I think Disney are doing for like bees and things.
Marie Rayner: And there's so many opportunities to even just take a small part of land and do something really cool with it that not only creates something that looks really nice and improves the guest experience in that way, but also does that whole education piece and makes people feel better because they can see nature. And it kind of ties those two things together. I think we can do more around giving like a behind the scenes look at stuff. Because one of the things that we used to talk about in my last company when we talked about design is having things be more open and visible because then you can repair things more easily, you can break things down for yourself. So were more about product and looking behind the scenes there.
Marie Rayner: But I think the same thing applies in something like a theme park, because first of all you've got the practicalities of being able to access things and repair them and that is all the same. But then you've also got like from a guest facing point of view and a guest experience point of view, it's interesting to see what goes on behind a theme park. I mean, one of the reasons I want to work in this industry is because I obsessively watched every Disney documentary about how Disney got built. Wow. Imagine if I could go in the tunnels underneath the Magic Kingdom. That would be incredible. So I love that kind of stuff.
Marie Rayner: But kids, I mean, my gosh, I take my boys anywhere and if they can see behind the scenes or they can see, it could be like a warehouse and they're like, what's going on in there? Maybe we're just a really nosy family. Actually. I think you're right though.
Ruth Read: I think people love to see, I think especially the fans, they really want to see how things work and it not only is a really handy thing to show guests, but it actually, it has that educational piece. I know, like Portaventura, who we've mentioned as well. They have, I think they have maybe Spain's largest solar farm. I think it's. I went and saw it was really big, but you can go and visit it. And they've got some really lovely kind of structures and play areas that show you know, kinetic energy and solar energy and how these things work. And that's a really nice way of educating people. But also, and I have to say, Marie, I was going to say wildflower gardens too, I think. Plant some seeds, sorry, landscape architecture team,.
Marie Rayner: It's fine.
Vero Celis: And I think like, we're, since like both Marie and I are design obsessed, like we're looking at like, you know, the design and maybe like conceptualising like this idea of like something new. And I was thinking like listening to Marie, like something we haven't mentioned a lot is the, like day to day operation and what happens, like where the opportunities are for parks, for museums, for, you know, attractions that are already built, already finished, you know, and like how do we, you know, like improve that experience, you know, and like, I think this is like also like bridging a little bit with what you spoke about, like the backstage, you know, like when the project is already built, it's already there, you have it's operational, people are visiting it. Right.
Vero Celis: But you have all of this part, like in the backstage, these decisions that you're making on every day, like for example, what you buy, who do you buy it from, where is it coming from, like who's designing whatever it is that you're buying, like your merch, for example. And I think that there's a big opportunity as well. There's to kind of make more conscious decisions and I would say like every day try to make like a more conscious decision, like it's okay not to know everything. It's okay not to have all of the answers from the beginning. Like for example, one of the things that I see all the time is the switch from plastic cups into the paper plastic cups. And there's nothing worse than that from the recyclability point of view.
Vero Celis: Sure, it has like other, other benefits. Like they tend to be lighter. So they tend to be, you know, they have sometimes less carbon embedded when they're moving from one side to the other. But in terms of the whole life cycle of that cup, the paper plastic is the worst that we can do. And like I have never seen anybody, and I mean never. And I worked in many industries, I worked for a very long time in the mining industry. I've never seen anybody who consciously says yes, I want to make the possible worst decision ever. No, that just does, that doesn't happen. Like we, like somebody tells us this is a good idea, we look, we touch the paper cup, we think, oh this is paper. This is much better than plastic.
Vero Celis: Obviously, like it has to be. Yeah, but it is like this like little thing that nobody explained to us, you know, that nobody told us that wasn't the best decision to make. But we made it with the best intention. So like it's okay to make a mistake. It's okay if we at some point chose one, you know, one like decision that wasn't the best. But it's also okay to look at this as a process, you know, as growing.
Ruth Read: So on the behind the scenes side, you've got some data and some information. What's next? What are the quick wins?
Vero Celis: Like if we analyse that, what we're buying, you know, if we're able to map a little bit, you know, like if we run, you know, like you take your ERP data, you take your even like the bank data and you export, you put it in an Excel spreadsheet. The easiest thing to look will be probably like from which country is your stuff coming from? Is there any chance that you can switch a couple of your products to a closer location, something that has, you know, a smaller carbon footprint like start, small start, like with those easy decisions, easy choices, like if you are able to identify some patterns and of course there are tools that will help you do this like better in a more efficient way. There's us, there's like so many other tools out there that will help you.
Vero Celis: But like even a single small spreadsheet that lets you visually see okay, I'm buying from 15 countries. Like can I buy from 10, can I buy like some more stuff from my own country or can I move from, I don't know, buying from this big producer that, you know, it's not such a great quality. Maybe I move it to this local shop that does organic stuff. Maybe I, you know, I support a female owned business, you know, bipoc community business. You know, like it's this like small choices that you can make once you have looked even for 10, 15 minutes to the data that you already have. You don't need to reinvent the wheel.
Ruth Read: I just thought of this right now and I'm sure there's a problem with it, which is why it's not happened. But I wonder with that example, Veru, I mean cut down how many things you offer on your menu and get your, get your food and beverage suppliers from fewer places. Like that could be easy thing, right? Like offer less, offer slightly less choice and therefore reduce the waste, reduce the things. I think there's loads of totally like the easy and quick wins. There's no shame in doing a quick win if it's a quick win, I think.
Vero Celis: Absolutely. Or offer seasonal stuff, you know. Yeah, like just seasonal food, like makes sense also, you know, like we're. Strawberries are designed for summer for a reason. Like in winter where, you know, oranges and citrus grow, that's when you need the most amount of vitamin C. Right. And we tend to forget this very simple ancestral knowledge that nature is just bringing with us. Right. Like yeah, those fruits for example, make sense in the sense of what we need in terms of nutrition. And it's just, you know, less footprint if you're getting, you know, for example here in Spain, if you're getting the oranges during the winter locally instead of like flying in those strawberries back from Chile.
Ruth Read: See, now I want some strawberries because it's sunny outside. We've brainstormed various solutions and nice ideas that are probably wrong for all sorts of reasons and not so easy. But there you go. But the solutions exist. You know, we know as an industry, as a community, we know what to do. So why isn't the industry moving faster? What's, what's holding us back?
Marie Rayner: I would say there's three areas. There's alignment, cost and sort of the fear of the unknown. So with alignment, what I mean there is generally, and this does refer to new projects, but I think it stands for existing parks that need new attractions or that are changing a particular Space. When you start a design project, you have the development team and they are tasked with delivering the project on time and delivering it to the right cost. And there's a number of KPIs they have.
Marie Rayner: Sustainability may or may not be in that, but if you've got an idea that costs more at that stage and they've not budgeted for it doesn't really matter a lot of the time if that has a long term cost saving that's going to impact the operational budget because they're not tasked with the operational budget. So there's a real lack of alignment, I think on projects between different project teams that quite often impede how effective we can be at putting forward sustainable solutions.
Marie Rayner: Whereas we recently completed a project in Saudi where the operations team were very involved all the way through and that really raised the bar of what we were able to achieve because everybody on the team understood the long term sustainability goals and how every decision was going to impact that and how it would play out in the long term. So that worked really well. And I think that's what we would always try and push for is to kind of have everybody in a room at the start of the process and just align. But I think that stands for businesses in general as well, because if businesses aren't aligned in what they want to achieve, it becomes very difficult for to work together.
Marie Rayner: And in the lack of alignment I think there's also then the cost issue because if you want to do something that's more sustainable, that isn't up to scale in the same way that current say their materials, for example, if you want a more sustainable material, quite often that comes at a premium right now because we don't have the manufacturing in place to delivery at the same pace as traditional materials. But because there's a premium obviously and that stops people wanting to go for it. And until we get to the point where we can show that the demand is there, then the green premium is going to continue to be there and sit there and be a barrier.
Marie Rayner: So we need to find a way of increasing demand or making other materials just as expensive or so that we can reduce the cost of those better materials or better services or whatever it might be. Because cost definitely causes a barrier. I think especially in today's economy where there's a lot of uncertainty, no one wants to be spending more than they have to. So we need to come up with some really creative ways of being more sustainable without it necessarily costing a fortune and also figuring out how to drive down those kind of green premiums. And then the final point is that people are worried about not knowing. I think sustainability can be just overwhelming at times. I mean, when I started on the storyline sustainability strategy, actually the company does absolutely loads of brilliant sustainability work.
Marie Rayner: We've got some incredibly talented people that know tonnes about sustainable design. And so the issue wasn't the ability to do it was more about are we structured in the right way to report what we need to report, which is where we've been going over the last couple of years. And I think when you say to people when it's unstructured, oh, we need to be more sustainable, everyone's like, oh, well, we don't know how to do that. But then back to Vera's point earlier once you start measuring, even just small things, it builds that picture and becomes a bit clearer and you feel a bit more confident. But then you still have that worry of, oh well, let's use this new technology. It sounds fantastic and we think it could save us loads and whatever.
Marie Rayner: But you don't know for certain that a newer, better technology isn't going to come out in six months time. So how do you know for certain that's the one that you should invest? And you can really go around and round in circles trying to figure out, well, should we wait? And then you could just wait for decades. So what I'm concluding to is if everyone is aligned, that really is the first step of preventing future issues like the cost issues and then the worrying about where to invest. Because once you know clearly what your mission is, then every decision you make becomes a lot easier and the concerns about whether or not you should invest in certain technologies or certain processes becomes more about is that right for us?
Marie Rayner: Don't worry about whether it's right for everybody else. Is it right for our business and what we need right now? And I think that if we can kind of overcome those three things, that would put companies in a much better position.
Ruth Read: I always like the quote, if you can't do the best thing, do the next best thing. It's not the right quote, but you know, like, do the next best thing. Do the thing that says do the thing that's the best thing for you to do right now, given what you know, and go from there. I mean, I always think about when we started our sustainability stuff. I remember carbon neutral was the thing like everybody be carbon neutral, everyone be carbon neutral. And actually that's not the case anymore. You can't, you know, carbon neutral is not, I mean, it's not greenwashing but it's kind of. It. It opened up all sorts of doors for greenwashing and I think people got really worried about it.
Ruth Read: And you can, as various said, you know, start somewhere, do something like the perfect day. Step will be your enemy, if that's what you're chasing. And yeah, I think. I think that's really important to keep in mind. It's such a quickly growing field, especially on the research side. You know, science is changing all the time. There's so much research and development happening, it's really hard to know. But doing nothing is always worse. On our side as well. I would say that I think there's. I don't know whether people don't care, whether they're too worried about doing the wrong thing, whether it is really heavy.
Ruth Read: But we did a survey recently and found that people in charge of organising organisations within the industry itself largely don't know if we're doing enough to combat the climate crisis. And that's within their companies themselves, but also as an industry. And I think it's both, isn't it? It's really scary. It's really hard to know what to do. There's a lot of choices. Everything has pros and cons. But then also, yeah, it's. It's just hard, isn't it? Very. I mean, what do you see? You work directly with companies that want to do better, but where do those barriers lie?
Vero Celis: So a lot of the times, like, what I find is that people are concerned about, like, a lack of knowledge, that they don't know how to deal with these things and they don't know what. Which questions they should be asking. Also, a lot of the times what I face, that companies are afraid of both cost and afraid of how much time they will have to invest in doing some of the analysis. Right. Which is something that I would say on our side.
Vero Celis: We're very obsessed with building technologies that make it as easy as possible, as fast as possible, and for people have the least amount of knowledge as possible, which is the complete opposite in a way of what I would say most of us learn in university or when you're, you know, like building yourself up in this field, like one of my professors used to say, and pardon the Spanish, but one of my professors used to say, which means something around the lines of if you talk fancy, you charge fancy. Yeah. For decades I have felt that this is how sustainability is managed. You know, like, we use a lot of acronyms and we lose. We use a lot of, like, big words and like scary topics. And yeah, like you have to measure all of your carbon footprint.
Vero Celis: And it sounds like I, I believe that one of the things that we have done as sustainability professionals is mostly scared people. We have scared people into thinking this is expensive, this is difficult, this is like, if we don't have to do it, we're not going to do it. So we like what we're intentionally doing is like turning that upside down using the simplest language that we can possibly use, using the simplest, cheapest frameworks that we can possibly use. So you can have some data, some useful reports, some useful analysis that can help you make better decisions, even marginally better, even 1% better. Compound is thousands percent better in a couple of years. So striving for that 1% better with simple, with accessible techniques. I would say it's our obsession on our side.
Ruth Read: I guess we're kind of running out of time. I know we could all talk about this all day. I always like to know what you would do, what you would design, what you would build, what you would bring into the world if you had the resources and the time. So Marie, what's from the kind of design and architectural and the storyline side? What, what's your. Is it the golden egg? What's your golden egg?
Marie Rayner: From my point of view, and this is not necessarily like a storyline point of view, but the more that we can make design circular, the better I worry about our, like, finite resources and how they're being used. And you know, that includes water, it includes materials, it includes fuel. And I think that we have too much of a tendency to throw things away and not reuse them. And actually, if you looked at the whole attractions industry, there must be more opportunity to reuse and share and recycle than we do currently because there's just so. There's so much out there already that. That would be like a maybe magic wand. It would be that we would have a more circular approach to how we design theme parks, I guess.
Ruth Read: And Vero, what about you? What's your magic wand?
Vero Celis: So I would take the boring part of, especially of parks because I love museums, don't get me wrong, I love them, especially art museums. And I love aquariums or ensues as well.
Marie Rayner: But you like a coaster, don't you? You like a roller coaster?
Vero Celis: I love a coaster, yeah. That's why I ended up on Mala Rights in the first place.
Vero Celis: So I like, if I had like all the money in the world and the freedom to create, I would love to take those places that we tend to perceive as the most boring. Well, they are the most boring. I would re completely redesign how we deal with queues in parks. I would transform them into an active space where, you know, like, you could move a little bit. So like you could be generating the energy for the roller coaster itself. With the queue you already have, you know, like so many people waiting, like couple hundred easy. So you could have like kinetic floors and you know, like have small stations with like bikes.
Vero Celis: So instead of being that the two hour, three hour drag that it is to wait for a nice coaster, it could be like, you know, a confined, like you still would have to be in that space, but you could be actively doing something. We could have like, you know, interactive like measurements of like how much energy is produced by the queue and like how, you know, how much of the energy is actually generated at the queue from what is consumed by the coaster itself. For example, like if I had a magic wand, I would be designing those projects. So like, if somebody wants me to redesign their queue, like I'm here, I have lots of ideas.
Marie Rayner: I was just about to say, yeah, like if you need to go and start working in theme park design and kind of guess we'll have you in Storyland.
Ruth Read: Thank you so much both for joining us today. I think it's been really great and it's always nice to chat. So this episode was written by really the three of us, I would say. I think we wrote this together alongside Sami, and it was edited by Steve Folland and produced by Emily Burrows and Sami from Plaster, as well as Wenalyn Dionaldo from Skip the Queue HQ.
Ruth Read: So if you'd like to find out more about the work Vero and Marie are doing, head over to the Show Notes. If you'd like to have more conversations like this, as well as joining in, please sign up to receive the greenloop monthly climate newsletter where we share positive stories, tips and ways to make a difference as well. And I guess with that, we say goodbye. Thanks so much, guys.
Vero Celis: Thank you.