In this episode of Changing the Bog Standard, host Dan Ilic chats to Elissa Foster, the head of sustainability at Who Gives A Crap, about how consumers and consumables can drive change.

Featuring:

• Dan Ilic - host and investigative humorist

• Elissa Foster - head of sustainability, Who Gives A Crap

What can individuals do to drive change? Support brands that give a crap. Elissa Foster has two decades of experience steering consumer brands towards environmentally responsible practices. She knows that people vote with their dollar and believes that Who Gives A Crap has a role to play in helping to educate and empower people to make choices that will change the world for the better.

One of the problems the company has identified is that people just don’t have the facts. “Two in three people have no idea that toilet paper comes from trees,” Foster says. “People just don’t think about toilet paper that much, and the first step is making people aware.

“There’s other alternative materials, like using recycled paper or using bamboo fibre, like we do, that make perfectly wonderful toilet paper.”

Foster graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a doctorate in environmental science, and formerly worked as the head of product environmental impact at the clothing brand Patagonia. She’s no salesperson, she says, but with her experience in environmental management for consumer brands, she understands that one of the most powerful things we can do for the environment is change the products we spend money on.

Who Gives A Crap is a business and social enterprise that sells 100% recycled and 100% bamboo toilet paper and donates 50% of its profits to improve sanitation in the developing world. “I think it’s an amazing place to be an environmentalist,” Foster says, “because companies can really drive change, and so it’s very inspiring and you feel like you’re actually making change, which I love.”

Foster is aware of how much greenwashing goes on in the business world, and how meaningless words such as “sustainability” can seem, but she has also seen a lot of change. “I think there’s more and more businesses that have a greater purpose than just making profits and are thinking about their social and environmental impacts more.”

Can changing your toilet paper really change the world? Foster thinks so. The more businesses that provide environmentally aware products and services, she says, the more power people will have to choose ethical products, and the more companies that haven’t adopted sustainability practices will be phased out.

In this episode of Changing the Bog Standard, host Dan Ilic chats to filmmaker and activist Damon Gameau about the power of a good narrative, and the importance of creating a new one

Featuring:

• Dan Ilic – host and investigative humorist

• Damon Gameau – filmmaker and activist

Damon Gameau understands the power of stories. The documentarian is perhaps best known for his 2014 work, That Sugar Film, which tackled hidden sugars and healthy eating myths, and his 2019 film, 2040, which looked how climate change might impact the world over the next two decades.

Gameau’s most recent work, Regenerating Australia, released last year, centred around a series of interviews with a diverse group of Australians who shared their hopes and dreams for the country’s future.

The idea, Gameau says, was to show viewers a vision of regeneration and a pathway to help bring it to life.

But to build a new narrative, we have to change the old one. “The major narrative that’s doing all that the damage is this idea that we are separate and superior to nature,” Gameau says.

Fortunately, this way of seeing nature is a relatively new thing in human evolution and it’s not too late to change it, Gameau says. We need to appreciate the “intense complexity” of a tree: all the life it provides for animals and insects, its ability to store carbon and to transpire moisture that cools the earth, as well as the nutrients it carries underground through mycelium networks.

This is more than just a nice story. This reframing is essential for biosecurity and even national security, Gameau says. We need to consider the things that we rely on trees for, such as medicine, and how deforestation could affect disease treatment, or how food shortages would worsen refugee crises.

“If we don’t have forests, we don’t have pollinators and we don’t get those foods. So everything is deeply connected.”

If there’s one thing he learned from making Regenerating Australia, Gameau says, it’s “how incredibly lucky we are in this country and how spectacular [our ecosystems] are … and how crazy it is that we’re not looking after them”.

Mangroves, for example, can store up to four times the carbon that a land forest can, as well as providing habitat for thousands of species, yet we’ve destroyed an estimated 20-35% of them worldwide over the past 50 years or so.

Still, Gameau maintains hope, and his latest project is a manifestation of that. He is currently working on a film with eight young environmental activists between the ages of 10 and 12 from all over the world. The idea is to ask them which CEOs they would like to talk to, and then tour around Europe on a yellow school bus run on biofuel to meet those CEOs.

“They are just so switched on and so eloquent,” Gameau says. “It really does get down to simple things … ‘Why aren’t you going and cleaning up your mess from the oceans? Why are you leaving up to us?’

“We’ve created all this complexity to distract and make excuses, but there’s something refreshing about having these children just cut through and actually not listen to any of the bullshit.”

Whether you scrunch or fold, traditional toilet paper is a bit crap. Why? Over 1 million trees are flushed down the drain every day just to provide the world with enough dunny roll, according to research by environmental impact consultancy Edge, commissioned by toilet paper producer Who Gives A Crap.

In this episode of Changing the Bog Standard, host Dan Ilic meets Bill Eger, firefighter and president of Manyana Matters, a community-driven organisation from the coastal village of Manyana, on the South Coast of New South Wales.

The organisation was formed to combat development bordering nearby Conjola National Park.

Much of the bushland around Manyana was destroyed in 2019-20, by bushfires that left many locals struggling with mental health issues.

Not only do trees support Manyana’s biodiversity and cultural heritage, but they represent a sense of place and a sense of hope. When soon after the bushfires, developers came for what was left of the trees, locals including Eger took a stand.

Featuring:

• Dan Ilic - host and investigative humorist

• Bill Eger - president of the Manyana Matters Environmental Association and a local firefighter

Bill Eger was a command assistant for the Rural Fire Service and a first responder during the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires. As well as dealing with the loss of bushland around his home town of Manyana, he saw destruction all over the South Coast. It left him, and many he knew, with deep emotional scars.

“When you go through these sorts of things, it’s hard,” Eger says. “Normally, loss and grief, you process it, you can move on. But when there’s nothing left, there’s nothing really to process.”

Manyana is a biodiverse pocket of wilderness that Eger calls a “little paradise”. It is home to numerous endemic species, and many of the species that call Manyana home, such as the scrub turpentine, swift parrot and greater glider, are endangered.

Soon after the Black Summer fires, developers threatened to clear an unburnt section of native forest.

“You know, people were in shock,” Eger says. “They were grieving … and then when a developer decided that he was going to come in here and bulldoze one of the only pieces of unburnt habitat that was left in the villages … the first thought that went through my head was, that’s insane.”

The community formed Manyana Matters, contacted the Environmental Defenders Office, researched endangered species, formed objectives, and successfully halted the development – at least temporarily.

“In some ways we have already won, because the species that do exist in there are still breeding and carrying on their lives,” Eger says. But the area is yet to be permanently protected and the fight is far from over.

It’s not just about trees, but biodiversity and protecting the community as well, he says. Manyana Matters is dedicated to preserving the natural and cultural heritage of the area and advocate for better governance and planning processes, as well as educating residents about the importance of protecting this environment.

“For me, it’s a place of imagination. It’s a place of inspiration and relationship … I think there’s got to be some sort of cognitive change in our society to understand how important these forests are to the survival of the environment and ultimately our own survival.”

Whether you scrunch or fold, traditional toilet paper is a bit crap. Why? Over 1 million trees are flushed down the drain every day just to provide the world with enough dunny roll, according to research by environmental impact consultancy Edge, commissioned by toilet paper producer Who Gives A Crap.

In this episode of Changing the Bog Standard, host Dan Ilic seeks the counsel of Professor Jakelin Troy about Indigenous perspectives on caring for and benefiting from trees, and why using the Aboriginal names for trees can change the way we relate to them for the better.

Featuring:

• Dan Ilic – host and investigative humorist

• Professor Jakelin Troy – member of the Ngarigo community, an executive of Ngarigo Nation Indigenous Corporation and director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research at The University of Sydney

Australia is rich with unique plants and animals that rely on trees as the scaffolding for their ecosystems. Some of these trees, such as the Wollemi and Huon pines, are among the oldest species in the world. Yet global commerce tends to frame trees as commodities to be turned into kitchen benches, notebooks and toilet paper. How do we reframe the narrative to see them as living, breathing and valued members of our community?

Professor Jakelin Troy, a member of the Ngarigo community of the Snowy Mountains, has a thing or two to say about this. They have written for the Guardian about the importance of learning Indigenous names for trees to establish our understanding of them as community members and renew our respect for them.

“I used to walk around the mountain behind my house in Canberra, in Ngunnawal Country, and it has many snow gums on it,” Professor Troy says, “and that’s a connection with my own high country, the snow country. And there was a waraganj that I would go and stand in front of and put my hands on. It has this beautiful, smooth, cool bark.”

Waraganj (pronounced Wu-ru-gung) is the Ngarigo word for snow gum, a tree that is particularly important to Professor Troy. Waraganj have been threatened in recent years by drought, fires and pests. Professor Troy speaks about being brought to tears at the sight of trees being cut down in the Snowy Mountains and feeling like they were losing family members. The idea of cutting down a tree is antithetical to Indigenous philosophies, Professor Troy says.

“When the First Fleet arrived in Sydney and started chopping down trees in the Sydney area to build structures, Aboriginal people in Sydney … threw themselves around the trees and tried to stop this happening because they couldn’t believe anyone would actually cut down a whole tree.”

Professor Troy serves on the executive of the Ngarigo Nation Indigenous Corporation, set up to preserve cultural heritage and protect pristine alpine landscapes. Professor Troy hopes Indigenous perspectives on trees and land management can help stem the tide of species loss in Australia’s rich and ancient ecosystems.

Professor Troy also knows that this deep relationship with trees is not exclusive to First Nations people in Australia. They are the director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research at The University of Sydney and have lived and studied with Indigenous communities around the world.

“I work in north-west Pakistan, in Swat, and there was a tree that was recently destroyed. It fell into the river with the latest floods in that area. They’ve been catastrophic with climate change … and people are mourning it as the loss of a community member.”

For Professor Troy and many Indigenous communities around the world, trees symbolise something bigger than us, and a reason to look outside our individual narratives.

“Trees outlive us and they tell our stories for a long time … ” Professor Troy says. “They live in our family memories.”