Natura Cosméticos S.A. (NTCO3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] on really elevating the business voice around the value of peaceful protest in the U.K., and this really helped us to see what an appetite there was amongst businesses of all shapes and sizes all over the U.K. to get more involved in using their voice for good. And we've just been really interested in thinking about what can businesses stand up for this year. So that's why I'm here on the call. Over to you, Char.

Thank you, Charlotte. Well, and I've been really excited for this. And I just want to reflect a little bit on how it came about because Charlotte, Matt, you guys have done some extraordinary work in mobilizing businesses. And I know, Charlotte, you and I had a chat just before Christmas, with Sophie, who we're going to hear from a little bit later on as well, and we are sort of just saying, wouldn't it be great if there was a community of people who are all really connected and really believe that people and business can be a force for good. And we could do so much more if we were joined up and together and is there a place where we can do that. And I think when we sort of looked around the landscape, obviously, there were a few places, but where we could kind of all have a virtual place together felt important. So I kind of call this like the field of dreams. We're like, let's just put a date in the diary, let's invite a few people who we know are doing amazing things, and let's just see what happens. And as we know, with the field of dreams, if you build it, they will come. And Charlotte, am I right, there were 70 people, I think, that ended up registering for today. So it does show that it feels like there's a good spirit around. And I think when we met Charlotte, and we talked with Sophie, one of the things that has really stuck with me a lot is the 5 that actually came from Oxford Net Zero. And I know that they're going to be on the line, I think. If they're not already, they'll be joining us soon. But it's this idea that actually -- they have this line that it's, yes, in this world, we need net zero businesses, but we also need businesses right now to be acting for a net zero world. And what I'd encourage us all to do is think about, yes, the net zero, but it's also about creating just inclusive and equitable approach as to how we can create the world we want to live in and what we want to pass along to future generations. And the reason why I think this is important, it's because we know that the challenges that we're facing are systemic. So yes, there are things that we need to do within our own business. But unless we start addressing things together at a systems level, looking at those policy interventions, looking at those cultural changes, we're going to really not make the headway we really need to do. So this is about us all holding that space of, yes, recognizing the things we do in our business are important. And collectively, we want to come together and be businesses for, yes, that net-zero world, for that regenerative world, for that just an equitable world that we all want to see. So hopefully, over the course of the next 1.5 hours, we'll again hear from some inspiring actors that are really creating spaces for us to hopefully join forces and engage more deeply. So yes, really excited to have the call. And by the way, I'm getting kind of distracted because there's so many great songs also coming in here. I feel like we need to do a Spotify playlist in real time. But Charlotte, I think let's turn it back over to you and Matt and hear the amazing story that can just show us like what is possible when businesses come together to take a stand.

All right. So welcome, everybody. It's lovely to see 34 of you on this Monday morning. And to give you a bit of signposting for how we're going to use the time today, our rough agenda is as follows: So the point of today is a moment for us all to step back. We are a month into 2023, and to think together about what other changes we would like to see emerging this year. And how we can, as Char said, collaborate together from our different business perspectives using our organizations, using some of the communities that we're already part of to using our voice in many, many different ways to create the world we really want to see for people and planet this year. So today is about community, it's about us understanding what we're doing and how we can join up. As part of that, we are going to hear from 4 amazing organizations who are going to talk about different ways that businesses can support those campaigns. These range from -- we kind of have a theme this time around climate, and we have people coming to speak to us about the role of business voice in tech when it comes to climate and finance when it comes to climate. We have Oxford Net Zero talking to us about some of the broader policy pieces. We have She Changes Climate talking about representation. So we've got a really nice kind of climate theme for today. And this is an experiment. This is the first call bringing people together to coordinate on these themes. So we'll be really interested to hear how we can support you. We'll take some time at the end of the call to thinking about what we might do in future calls. So before we get started with our 4 speakers today, Matt and I are just going to share a little bit because he's going to talk for 3 minutes on what happened last year with something called Business Stand Up, which is how I know many of you came to this call. So a special welcome if you were involved in Business Stand Up last year. And Matt and I are just going to give a little bit of a flavor of what that taught us. So Matt, I'm just going to switch to sharing slides. You might want to introduce yourself, and then we'll do a little bit of a recap on that.

So my name is Matt. I worked with Charlotte to run Business Stand Up last year. I run an agency called Rubber Republic, and we specialize in climate communications and sustainability comms. But how I came to this was Charlotte and I were both talking about how the police bill was looking to shut down the ability to protest some climate last year, and we were both looking for something we could do and we both started looking at what business could do in that space. And over the course of -- through our Christmases, it's died just before Christmas Eve for last, over the course of like between family meals and all kinds of craziness, we managed to pull together over 250 U.K. businesses by the end of February, representing over GBP 1 billion of turnover. And we were able to harness that voice and feed it into the House of Lords, we've managed to get press and we managed to communicate directly with NPEs through different methods using the amazing cohort, many of whom are on this call who came together around our call for that. And the main thing, I guess, that we learned doing that was the business voice is disproportionately powerful because it's often missing from these conversations. So this isn't lobbying, this isn't CSR. This is just us as businesses coming together to speak out for the society. We want and need for our businesses to be able to thrive and that requires, as Char has mentioned, some sense of stability and equity in the society we create. So yes, the outcome is that we had a lot of positive response. The lords were incredibly positive, particularly. Parliament was slightly harder to get into, but there was still effectiveness. And the business voice was really listened to and so there were a lot of requests for us to do more of it. What that looks like is what we're here to talk about. We can't obviously do everything and things have to work for the businesses involved. So I guess the question we need to ask is when do we want to stand up and what do we want to stand up for -- but the positive thing is there is real appetite for businesses to express themselves in this way. So I'm going to hand back to Charlotte, but that was just a very quick recap of what we did and why and why we've come together here. This is as much a conversation and a question as anything else because we need to find out what do people want and how can we harness the business voice to move forward.

Thanks, Matt. Perfect little summary. Thanks for being so sweetie. So yes, I mean, as you can see on the slide, today what astounded Matt and I was how quickly we were able to coordinate a really diverse group of businesses to work together to share their thinking on what really mattered to them around peaceful protest. And it got us thinking about what are the other ways that we could be really smart about using this business voice, just like Matt said. What we heard from a lot of civil society organizations was that they so often don't have the business community talking about some of these issues. So we're really thinking about how we can broaden what that word advocacy means, which I know is something that Char is really, really passionate about. So I'll stop sharing now. Any quick questions on what Business Stand Up was or anything, please do put them in the chat, and Matt and I can try and answer just a couple of those. Char, do you want to lead us into who we're going to hear from today?

Yes, absolutely. And I'm actually just going to keep on encouraging people to put things in the chat. We promise we're going to try and capture all the questions you have or comments you want to make, or songs you want to keep on putting onto the playlist. I'm going to make that into a commitment. We're going to make sure we send along the playlist to everyone who's on the Zoom here today because there are some really good ones here. But just a giant thank you, Matt and Charlotte, for setting the scene so beautifully and I think just really showing what this looks like when businesses can come together. We know that there are going to be a series of really important issues for 2023 and beyond. And so what we have over the next little bit is 4 amazing speakers that are going to share their view of where are the ways businesses can really step up and some really specific calls to action that we can all have on our radar. And it's my great pleasure to bring in Alexis McGivern here, who's on the line from Oxford Net Zero, welcome Alexis. And maybe we can turn it over to you for 5 quick minutes, 5 to 7 minutes, of what you see on the horizon from your perspective at Oxford Net Zero. And again, what businesses can do. And I would encourage people, if you've got questions for Alexis, please put them in the chat. We will have a few minutes to address them before moving on to our next speaker. But again, if we don't get to everything, please just don't worry. We will find ways of making sure we're sharing the information. And if things are going as they are standing, we'll make sure that there's a way to connect in with some of our speakers. But yes, please use the chat function. And Alexis, I'm going to turn it over to you, my friend.

Thanks so much. I'm just -- for some reason my Zoom isn't working. So I've just uploaded my presentation in the chat. If someone wouldn't mind sharing the screen. Someone is not letting me share. Char, thank you for the introduction, and thanks for the invitation. So I'm a researcher at Oxford Net Zero, which is an interdisciplinary research group based here at the University of Oxford. Thank you so much, I appreciate it. If you just go to the next slide, please. So we're a 24-person research group that looks at Net Zero across lots of different disciplines. We have lawyers, biologists, climate physicists. We basically look at the challenge of Net Zero across several different disciplines, and we also engage with businesses, civil society and also national and international policymakers to make sure that we're making adjusted increase of transition to Net Zero. So the next slide, please. We do this in a number of ways. Maybe you've already heard of the Net Zero tracker, which is an instrument that we use quite a lot, which is tracking the Net Zero, the quantity and quality of Net Zero commitments across the Fortune 2000 list and also every country in the world. And so we use that data a lot that we recently had a lot, for example, at COP 27 to show kind of how we're sort of lagging. We have a lot more Net Zero commitments, but we don't have a similar amount of high-quality Net Zero commitments. So if you're interested, the Net Zero stock take was a report that we released in June, and it's very easy to read and has a lot more information on kind of quality Net Zero. So next slide. So what we do at the University of Oxford is really try to bring hope and data and make sure that we're keeping high-quality integrity work. So this is the Director of the Smith School, which is the institute that I sit in, showing that we could save $12 trillion as compared to business as usual by making it out to Net Zero transition. So we try to make an argument both from a justice lens, but also we try to appeal to the world as it is now, even though it's not the world as we wish it to be. So yes, next slide, please. So I just want to walk through a couple of the ways that we engage on Net Zero. So the first is we see high integrity definitions of Net Zero. So we work a lot with the standards community, the international standards organization. We were technical authors on their new Net Zero guidelines and also some -- one of my colleagues sat on the UN high-level expert group on the Net Zero equipments of nonstate actors, so kind of reclaiming the term of Net Zero. We also work with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to support ambitious businesses on their path to Net Zero. So we do strategic research identifying kind of the main principles of what should be included in Net Zero strategy and what's already included in voluntary initiatives and standards. And then we use that as the basis of our maturity assessment for WBCSD's 200 members. And then finally, this is a stream that I'm running because I'm very interested in inclusive and just Net Zero is engaging with civil society, criticism of Net Zero and as we're working towards kind of standardizing that to make sure that we're bringing forward those perspectives. So next slide, and I'll ask people to -- I have a big slide coming up, which is a bit chunky. So I'm just warning you that it's chunky, and I'm not asking you to read at all. I've given you my slide so that you can go in and click through at your leisure, but we did some analysis last year [indiscernible] and I think is on the call is just from The Pivot Point report that the Net Zero released. This is part of one of the chapters that my colleague, Tom Hill, wrote, and just showing that as the key policy instrument, this is sort of where we're at right now is that we have a huge amount of coverage of disclosure targets, but disclosure is sort of the first step in order to make meaningful change. So right now, almost 50% of global GDP will be covered by some sort of mandated, legislated climate or sustainability-related disclosure framework, but it's not yet where we have other policy instruments. So if we just go to the next slide, and this is a chunky slide so don't be afraid of. And just these are some of the policy instruments in terms -- that we can look through. So obviously, disclosure is a big one and making sure that you're aligned with the global standard on responsible corporate lobbying. That's another one, there are sort of disclosure acts within that. Transition plans for the U.K. specifically, the U.K. Transition Plan Task Force, which Oxford is one of the secretariat of that organization is giving sort of more firm guidance on Net Zero transition plans, and they have an open consultation through until the end of February. So that's a very kind of tangible output in order to make sure that you're aligned on them. And then on claims. So there's a new upcoming sort of raised ambition on eco-labeling, and I'll walk through some [Technical Difficulty] policy instruments in just a second, but making sure that you're using the ISO Net Zero guidelines is something that's really important by making sure that we're all kind of singing from the same hymn sheet. On product standards, we want products that are actually abided by Net Zero to be -- to fall under a stronger eco-labeling. And that's something that's coming up in the U.K. Policy Environment this coming year. On procurement, that's a huge area of the mission. I don't what businesses are on the call and if you have any contracts with the U.K. government, but that's been a really important policy instrument to make sure that the government has a very strong procurement policy. So you might have seen that Biden announced a very strong procurement policy at COP 27 that any firm, I can't remember what the threshold was, but contracting with the U.S. government would have to have a Net Zero target in place. And the U.K. actually already has that. Any expected contract with a value of over GBP 5 million annually has to have a Net Zero goal and a Net Zero target in place for 2050. So again, it sounds like these are sort of dry policy instruments, but it actually makes a huge measurable difference in bringing companies into the fold that might not otherwise have set a Net Zero target. And then there's a whole piece on corporate governance, which is just to what extent do boards or management KPIs or Articles of Association include sustainability or more specifically from my interest Net Zero goals. And there, I just want to kind of highlight the U.N. high-level expert groups recommendations and making sure they are aligning their current policy advocacy. So I have one more slide, which is just -- if we go to the next one please, Charlotte, just to highlight, and this is just really kind of a taster, but Chris Skidmore was just commissioned to do this Net Zero review and make recommendations to the government on Net Zero. So Chris Skidmore is an MP who just finished his review. Oxford Net Zero and many of my colleagues across the university fed into this review. And I just -- there's 8 recommendations and there's a lot in it, and it's actually a really great report. So it's worth just checking it out. But here are just some of the policy recommendations that I think are maybe aligned with some advocacy opportunities. So just to say that these are sort of coming down the pipeline. The first is that one of Chris Skidmore's recommendation was to support reform on planning to allow for more solar and onshore wind to be developed locally. So more community-owned energy. That's something that will come in the next few months, sort of like planned policy or form around planning. And again, it sounds very dry, but that makes a measurable impact in terms of energy. There's another kind of discussion, open discussion about incentives for investment in decarbonization. In particular, there needs to be a lot more attention on the U.K.'s new emissions trading scheme. Because, for example, I used to work in waste management and incinerator emissions were excluded from the ETS and there's now from a lot of public pressure and also business pressure, a desire to include those within the UK's ETS. So that's sort of like another particular policy instrument. There's the green jobs task force recommendations, which is sort of giving support and recommendations to SMEs to plan and invest in the transition and make sure that they have good and green jobs on the horizon. So again, that will be kind of a positive instrument coming down the pipeline. Again, as I mentioned to you before, there's a desire to ramp up public emission by standardizing the approach to eco-labeling and that's something that companies are well positioned in this arena could really heighten the ambition there. And there's also ambitions to develop and support what we call a Net Zero target mark, which is acknowledging sort of the best-in-class for those who are very much aligned with Net Zero policies. And then finally, this is more kind of general policy instruments, but the U.K. is reviewing its role in trade agreements to remove trade barriers and encourage better competition, better -- not better competition, better collaboration to avoid competition that's kind of is seeded within well trade organization. And finally, the government is also looking at its investment policy in R&D for the Net Zero transition, and so that's also kind of an opportunity for policy engagement there. I'll just flip to the last slide, which is just a thank you and my e-mail, if I have any other questions. I just wanted to get quick and I don't know if I take these questions now or if you look at them later.

Alexis, yes, we're going to go through the questions now. You were so speedy. I can't believe how much you dabbed into that time. But we'll have a moment or two for questions, which is lovely. Thank you. I'm going to start sharing screen. It's been nice to see a few of these questions come through the chat. Alexis, you can have a little look. I think in a second, I would love to hear from you kind of what are the top one or two things you'd love businesses to do on this. So for anyone who joined the call, just as Alexis was sharing, we've got straight started into thinking about ways that businesses can come together to advocate for the world we want to see in 2023. Today's call is really themed around climate and Alexis has kicked us off thinking about from Oxford Net Zero perspective, what some of these really key moments of policy engagement in 2023. And I'd love to hear from you Alexis, if I was a business on the call who's new to this, who hasn't done much work in advocacy, what are the one or two things you'd love to hear from businesses. And then I'm going to pick up a couple of the questions out of the chat. But if you've got anything you'd particularly like to ask Alexis in person, please do and just use the raise hand function to raise your hand. Yes, Alexis, if I'm a new business, maybe I have a small business on this call, wondering how I can use my voices here? What are the 2 or 3 areas of focus you'd really suggest from that amazing sort of possie to share?

There's so many, and I will give a caveat, but I'm not as well as focused in the policy space. So there are probably -- and especially in the U.K. policy space. So there are so many things going on and there are probably things that I've missed, but if there are people who are familiar, please do jump in. I would say, from my perspective, one of the sort of biggest ways to see high integrity is to make sure that the U.K. is sort of legally mandated transition plans end up being very high ambitions. So as I mentioned, the U.K. transition plan task force has their consultation open to the end of February. And again, it's quite dry because it's looking at sort of the key elements of our transition plan, but making sure that it stays really high ambition is really important. Something that we noticed in the ISO Net Zero guidelines process is that businesses who have a vested interest in making sure that those -- that, that is low ambition will show up, will make it to every single consultation will submit written feedback, and it's a consensus-based decision. So it pulls down the ambition. So if you have ambitious businesses who are putting in their consultation and saying, this is actually what I want, this is what businesses want is really a high ambition transition plans so that we make sure that we're all on the same playing field. A real credence to people like my colleagues who are working on this to say, actually, this isn't just something we've made up that we're setting an impossible standard that no one will meet. There is actually demand. Likely, there are businesses who are fighting tooth and nail to low ambition. So it really, really helps us when that happens. And then I can add one thing that quickly is just to say just making sure we're all singing from the same hymn sheet. So using the ISO Net Zero guidelines and abiding by the UN's high-level expert group's principles for when you're creating a Net Zero strategy is also very, very helpful and a good advocacy opportunity. So I'll let you give your follow-up.

Thanks, Alexis. Yes. And just thinking on that one. So maybe if you can pop the link in the chat to where people can get involved in the February consultation in a moment, but if there's a business here who's on a call who is already in lots of other business groups, maybe with some businesses who would be more ambitious, would you encourage them to kind of share this consultation widely with any networks and business groups they're already in for people to get involved and submit their feedback to that?

Yes, definitely. I think that's a good way of getting sort of a wider group. And also on my slide, there's a link to all of these things I said. So if you download the slides, you can also go through that.

Thank you so much, Alexis. And just on that particular piece, we have until the end of February to give feedback to that consultation.

Yes, yes, lovely. Okay. I'm seeing some other questions for you that have arrived in the chat. Great. Thanks, Tom. People sharing here, they can share this with other communities that you're in, who might be interested who can spread the word with. That feels good. Procurement, have you seen that, Alexis? So you asked if anyone had context in the U.K. government when we were discussing procurement, what is it that you would need help within that one?

Just that there is right now sort of a legally mandated procurement target. So I was just kind of highlighting that making sure that -- it's a little bit different because in the U.K., it's more in trend than in other countries. Like if you -- if you were outside of the U.K., I would be asking people to encourage a procurement policy. And this is what I'm just trying to enforce that it stays enshrined and also that it stays high ambition. So for example, pressuring right now, it's for a Net Zero goal by 2050. And so what we do with the Net Zero tracker see not only the sort of end date but also what the conditions are for Net Zero. So if you're getting to Net Zero by only reducing your emissions to 70% and then dealing with the other 30%, your residual emissions by offset, that's not a very good quality policy. So there is obviously a target in place that you say they will only engage with contractors who have a Net Zero goal in place, but not necessarily so many stipulations on the quality of that goal. So that's what we're trying to do now. And someone asked me at the chat how I feel about Net Zero, I have so many complicated dealings about Net Zero and for a long time. It was kind of on the other side of it of rallying against Net Zero as a term because I come more from a civil society community organizing background. And what I've kind of recognized in this time is just that Net Zero came from kind of a climate physics background. Actually one of my directors at Oxford Net Zero is the person who coined the term and then has since become completely manipulated to mean something that is entirely not and used to delay and sort of divert attention from immediate action that's needed now. And I think what's good about Oxford Net Zero is that we're trying to reclaim that and seed higher integrity to make sure that you can't just greenwash your way to action basically.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm conscious that some people have joined while you were sharing with us. So welcome to this first business advocacy briefing call of 2023. And we've started today just hearing from Oxford Net Zero and some of the key climate policies, particularly around Net Zero where we could get involved. Just to look back on that last question, Alexis around procurement, is there a particular next step you'd like from people who might have great context for you in procurement? Is there something you'd love people to do?

I would love if I could follow up on that. Again, I'm sorry, I'm not so much of a policy person, so I'm just kind of pulling through recommendations from other people. But I guess, yes, I'd be happy to pull out.

So if anyone wants to reach out with you in the meantime with procurement context, so they have, that sounds like a good idea using your e-mail that you shared.

Yes, please. And I just also want to just -- I just uploaded my slides again in case someone joined, but I just also wanted to highlight some of the -- we did a very rapid analysis document when the high-level expert group guidelines came out, a sort of Net Zero guidance across the different policy sort of like -- that's our guidelines, the high-level expert group and others. If there's -- people want to look at that at a glance. And we also released a report that was looking across 33 voluntary initiatives and standards to pull out sort of the key elements of Net Zero. So I'll put that in the chat as well.

Wow, so much. Thank you so much. And I imagine that you might have some more questions for you at the end of the call. So welcome to everyone who has just arrived at 12:30. You are joining the first call bringing together many businesses across the U.K. who are really interested in this question of how we can use our voice to create the world that we want to see this year. So we've just heard from our first speaker, which is Oxford Net Zero. We are continuing in a climate theme. We're going to be hearing from She Changes Climate shortly, we're going to be hearing from Make Money Matter. We're going to be hearing from Ecosia about how we can use our tech. Then we're also going to find the time to come together to think about how we might meet in this group, what would be useful for people, any other things that people want to bring from their work. So Char, I'm going to hand over to you, and you can be in the middle of our 2 speakers to welcome those new arrivals.

Yes, and it's great to have so many people joining us coming in. And if those of you who have just come through at 12:30 are kind of feeling like, oh, wait, that Oxford Net Zero thing, I want to know more. I think one of my big takeaways in this experiment, Charlotte that we're kind of now making our way through is that it really feels like there's a lot of information from the speakers as well as within this community. And actually, maybe one of the things we should just make sure we develop and put into the link at the end is sort of a Google doc that will allow us to make sure we're popping all of these links in that everyone can have access to them and follow up with some of the key contacts. So thank you again, Alexis, for your presentation, but also your openness to keep the dialogue going. I know one of the things I'd love to put into that resource list is to make sure everyone has seen the Pivot Point Report. And as I know, Fiona is on the line here as well. So I think there's also some really great stuff if people haven't come across it yet. It's definitely worth tucking in. So yes, we're kind of building this as we go here, and I know there's already sort of some really great energy to follow up and to do more together. It's my great pleasure to welcome our second speaker, Bianca Pitt, who's the Co-Founder of She Changes Climate. She Changes Climate is about driving awareness of really the crucial role that women play in accelerating climate action. Bianca, I know I've been following a couple of your big campaigns over the last year and a bit. Actually, you've been around for just over -- it's around 2 years, right, since you started it and got going. But I think we'd love to hear a little bit more from you around what She Changes Climate is all about and what are some ways in which you can see businesses coming together to be a force for good when it comes to the things that you're taking a stand on.

Thank you, Char. And I'm just getting a note from people that I think one of the Zoom timings might have glitch. Lots of people have joined us at 12:30, missed the first 30 minutes. So I just want to recap. Hello, and welcome if you have just joined us. We are now 54 business people coming together to think about how we might use our voice this year in the U.K. This is the first of these calls, we are creating a space for businesses to work together to see how they might coordinate some of their activity for how they want to use their voice this year. So far today, we're going to hear from 4 speakers, and we already had from one. The first one was Oxford Net Zero. You'll see some notes. I don't think we might ask that the presentation to be reposted in the chat for anyone who's just doing and we're about to go to our second speaker. So you're going to hear from 3 more speakers, and then we'll have some time for open discussion. So we're just about to go to She Changes Climate. We'll have a short presentation. Please write any questions in the chat. We'll have a little bit of time for question and answer, and then we'll hear our next 2 speakers, Make Money Matter and Ecosia after that. All right. So welcome, if you joined us late and sorry, if there was a Zoom glitch on the timings, but you are here, and we still have a lovely hour together. So we'll go to our next speaker now.

Thanks so much, Char and Charlotte, for inviting us to speak to you today and for giving me the whole opportunity really to talk about the campaign that I started with few others, and that's now become a sort of budding movement, I would say, around the world, which is really exciting. You've asked us what's on the horizon for businesses in 2023. I would say very much still systemic transformation of our operating systems. And what we're looking at is the leadership for this transition. Who are the people who are going to drive the change. Who are the new voices, the new faces and the brains that we need to get on board to make change happen. My background is in business law and corporate finance, and I have very much an interest in change management. It started straight out of uni, and I can see that many years later, I'm still working on change management. And I'm actually applying this now to the greatest crisis that we as humanity have ever faced. I spent over decades looking at the global picture, what was happening to our ecosystems, what's the global response, what are people doing individually, who needs to be connected to whom, and I found it a network called the Women of the Environment to bring together female environmental philanthropists with CEOs, founders of charities and foundations and influencers, and really to connect the money with the work on the ground. I'm also in the first chair for environmental sustainability at INSEAD, one of the leading business schools in the hope that they can make a real push to educate business leaders around the world on what is required to make the shift. So I'm delighted to speak here today and to meet all of you. I would say that I suffered from carbon tunnel vision over the last decade, and that's despite hearing from many people about the need to look at climate justice, to look at inequalities in the system as well. I was completely stubbornly focused on removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and really didn't spend much time thinking about what was perhaps leading to this outside greenhouse gas emitters. Of course, there are a lot of other factors than just the emissions that we need to consider here. It was 2 events that really opened my eyes, and one was the pandemic. I think COVID serves as a stark reminder of the interconnectedness between our environmental, social and economic systems. I think not just to me, but to everyone else around the planet as well, and I'm glad to see and to say that there's been a real shift since. I think people have a whole different awareness now to how we can't focus on one system without thinking about the others as well and how they influence each other. And the other event was the U.K. hosting the COP 26, the climate negotiations. When the government announced the leadership team for the COP, we were very much surprised. And you can imagine this network that I run was particularly surprised to see that there wasn't a single woman on the leadership team. Now I might have not really spent much time thinking about this if COP wasn't such an important marker in the year and the only international gathering at which we are able to really shape climate policy and shape action in a way that nothing else does. We started to look at who was in leadership and who was making decisions on behalf of the planet in general. So only 9% of world leaders are women. That's a surprisingly small number, 1/4 quarter of parliamentarians and 1/5 of our ministers worldwide. And if you look at businesses, these numbers dwindle. Only 16% of board members worldwide are women. Only 7% of FTSE 100 CEOs are women, the FTSE 250 looks worse. For me, the most shocking number is that only 2% to 3% of VC funding goes to women-led teams. That means we are not investing in the ideas of 50% of the world's population. 50% of the world's population isn't given any money to make their vision happen. Now let's talk about this. Would COP have different results if it was run by women equally together with men? We have had 27 COPs, and emissions are still rising. That's a clear sign to me that something's absolutely not working. Research shows that if we get women on board, we get better results. We get better climate policy and more action. So countries with more female parliamentarians have lower emissions and better climate policy. Same is true for companies interestingly. And women even spend money on different things to men. For example, they are more likely to take staycations, that drive more cars and actually, they're more likely to take public transport in the first place. So there are indeed a key lever. The climate emergency is really a leadership emergency. It's a result of leadership that isn't diverse at all. And I think SDG 5 points to this, which is great. We need systemic transformation really fresh eyes. We say would you sell around the world with one eye firmly patched up or one hand behind tied behind your back? That doesn't make any sense. We need 50/50 vision on board now, particularly because we know that choppy waters lie ahead. And we need this steering where we need everyone at the steering wheel. We need this full vision to help inform us, but to also help transform us. She Changes Climate was set up by 3 cofounders. I'm one of the cofounders. 2.5 years later, I still haven't met in person. This tells you how we operate virtually successfully. We are able to cut down on emissions if we really want. We're able to stump up these campaigns, watched by over 170 million people around the world despite not meeting in person. To me, that's a great sign that we are indeed able to radically collaborate to strike partnerships across the world in a way that perhaps wasn't possible before. We got -- we've been writing and negotiating with COP presidency and the UN for every single COP since COP 26. I personally thought that the campaign wouldn't even be necessary. I thought we will amend the team and then we cannot now go back to what we normally do. But to my absolute amazement, there is indeed stubborn resistance against bringing women into leadership. I know this is not reflected by the faces on the screen, by the way. It's very encouraging to see that here, we've got roughly a 50/50 mix. But that is by no means representative to the rest of the meetings that you'd probably be in today, unless you work perhaps for Estee Lauder or Chanel. The support we had is overwhelming. So over 1,000 political, cultural, climate, business leaders have supported our campaign, and we very much encourage everyone to come and sign or let us and to become part of this campaign, which we deliberately made an ownerless campaign. Why? Because we want you and your business to be able to run its own She Changes Climate campaign. Why a campaign? We think that just a workshop isn't enough. We have to really make this a target. We need to make sure that if we run a company that our Board has 50/50 vision, that we hear from men and women equally, that men and women are able to inform us on our targets, our vision. And that, of course, we speak to the market with that same vision, I'd say, in mind. Are we addressing men and women equally or not? How can we expect them to come on board? How can we expect them to support our ideas for transformation if we haven't made sure we're addressing them all. It's very important to get -- yes, it's important to get women on board for their perspective and for the perception. And we want to invite you to come and support our He for She campaign this year to make the change happen.

Thank you for such a broad introduction that's been so lovely and just to hear a little bit about where this came from, Bianca. And please do paste in the chat, the links for people. So if you were just going to summarize anyone who joined while you were speaking, we've heard a lot about the lack of female leadership in this climate work. And so maybe 2 or 3 things that businesses on the call can do. You've mentioned what we can do in our own businesses and how we can work together. Could you just summarize those actions businesses can take for us?

Yes. First of all, look at your own board and make sure that it's gender balanced, that you have 50/50 vision on that board. Secondly, I would say if you haven't done this yet, to run a campaign for women's equality through your company using -- looking at your brands and using your communication channels for this, both internally and externally. If you are attending conferences to make sure that you're not speaking on manuals but on panels on which we have women and men equally represented. Obviously, all industry associations need to have women equally represented on their decision-making tables. It's something that's -- in the communication of companies, if you let people speak for your business, are you letting women and men speak for the business? Or is it many men speaking for the business? It's really taking a whole new lens to allow women to speak up and to bring in their voices because what we find is often, if you have women, particularly if you have them just in junior positions, but even if there's a minority of women in the room, even on a Board, they might not throw their weight around as you want. So this is -- it's just an exercise really to go through, and we're very happy to work with individual businesses, if you want to our help.

Thank you so much. And I'll leave you to paste some more links in the chat. And coming to the time, I want to move us to our next 2 speakers, so we have a bit more time for discussion at the end. But thank you so much. So we've zoomed out. We've looked at kind of climate strategy in a really broad way. Thanks to Net Zero thinking about some of these policy engagement moments, thinking about the ways that we can work together on transition plans and are making sure that the Transition Plan Task Force really ambitious as well as some of the other broader moments of climate. And then we've had Bianca talking to us about some of the changes that we can make within our own organizations, as well as some of the broader campaigns that She Changes Climate are running, particularly around women's leadership in the COP -- in the next COP coming up. So we'll have Bianca post a few more of those links in the chat. We're now going to move to our third speaker. And we've got Make Money Matters. We are going to bring a little bit of a different angle to this. So we've talked a lot about some of the climate strategy really broadly. And I think what Tony is going to talk to us about is the particular roles that business can play when it comes to finance, and what financial changes we need to see to support people and plan it to thrive. So Tony, I'm going to hand over to you.

Brilliant, thanks a lot, Charlotte, and thanks, everyone. It's really good to be here and see you so many of you. So I had a campaign called Make My Money Matter. It was co-founded by Richard Curtis. And for you as businesses, if you're focusing on your improving sustainability or looking at how is a business you can have a more positive impact on people, on planet, or as Char said at the outset to think about your actions and how the impact on climate, then thinking about your money is another way of doing that. And I think there's 2 ways that you could do that quite readily at not necessarily high cost as a business. And the first is to think about your staff pension and the other is to think about your corporate bank account. So maybe if I just start on staff pensions first of all. So in the U.K., there's about GBP 3 trillion in our pensions. And that money is really powerful. It's invested for the long term, and it can be used to build a better world and a better world that you retire into and your staff retiring to. But at the moment, a lot of that money is driving climate change. So over the past couple of years, we've been running a campaign, calling on U.K. pension funds to align to Net Zero, to commit to ensuring their investments, limit global warming to below 1.5 degrees. And as part of that, we ask pension funds to commit to halving emissions this decade. And so the approach from the IPCC to limit warming to 1.5 degrees is that steady trajectory to reduce emissions including halving them this decade, which is a really important decade for action, given that we're very near to tipping points in a lot of areas. So we ran a public campaign. We've had a lot of media coverage, and that's partly Richard Curtis and celebrity contacts. It's partly using some of that creativity to make great videos that really engage people in a funny kind of way and Rubber Republic have been one of those creative groups that have helped us on that. So our videos have been seen 22 million times across the U.K., which is just fantastic. We've had thousands of bits of media coverage. We've had thousands of people right to their pension fund asking for a Net Zero aligned pension fund. But also, we've had 120 businesses commit to provide their staff with Net Zero aligned pension schemes. And that's been really interesting because for pension funds, if they get one person or 100 or 5,000 writing to them, it doesn't have a huge impact. The biggest pension scheme in the U.K. is Nest. It's got 10 million people in it. So 5,000 people writing is something, but it's not huge. But when a business says it's not happy with the pension provider, that has a real impact, a very powerful impact. So we've had 120 businesses commit to provide schemes to their staff align to Net Zero. And what we've seen over the past 2 years is that over 50 pension schemes in the U.K. have made commitments to align to Net Zero, including halving emissions this decade, and that's GBP 1.5 trillion of assets that now will progressively reduce emissions in those investment portfolios, and that's fantastic, that really is. The real challenge now is to move that from commitments into action, and that means holding those pension funds to account. So a little example there. Ella's Kitchen, which is a small B corporation, produces makes baby food, they signed on to provide their staff with a Net Zero pension very early on and their pension provider made a commitment on Net Zero. But what Ella's Kitchen found was that over about a year, they saw the pension scheme had made a commitment and wasn't really doing very much. So they took that pension scheme to task. They didn't -- they still didn't step up. So they got PwC to come in and advise them on who they thought would be pension funds most ambitious on Net Zero and then Ella's Kitchen moved their pension scheme from the old provider to a new one. The new provider paid for that transfer, so there were no costs. And now staff in Ella's Kitchen are really happy. They've got a much better pension provider that's reporting to them frequently on the progress they're making on Net Zero. So I sort of think on the business side, the things that you can do very directly is ask your provider, is it committed to Net Zero. If not, why not, and ask them to change. And if you're not happy, then move the scheme to a better provider that is serious. And if they are committed, hold them to account. Get them to report on the progress they're making. What's the emissions reduction across the portfolio? Do they have a policy to try and tackle deforestation, which is a main -- a huge driver of climate change. So there's lots that you could do on your pensions. Looking at your corporate bank is another area. The 5 high street banks in the U.K., HSBC, Barclays, Santander, NatWest and Lloyd's are all financing fossil fuel expansion. Now the International Energy Agency has said that if we want to limit warming to below 1.5 degrees, we can't expand fossil fuel production. It sort of seems obvious -- but for all of those in the business, there's a real resistance to tackling that head on. So expanding fossil fuels really undermines progress on tackling climate change. It's very, very threatening. And so we've launched a campaign asking those 5 high street banks to stop financing fossil fuel expansion. We know fossil fuels are needed in the next few decades, but we don't need to grow that volume any further. HSBC and Barclays are the worst offenders. In 2021, they put EUR 13 billion of financing into companies expanding fossil fuels, exploring and developing new areas. In our public opinion polling, we found that 80% of people are completely unaware that their bank is financing fossil fuel expansion and financing and driving climate change. 10 million people say they would switch bank accounts if they knew more about what to do. So for businesses, what we're asking businesses to do is ask your bank, are they financing fossil fuel expansion and ask them to stop if they are. And if you're not happy, then maybe explore the possibility of switching to an alternative greener bank. If you wanted to do more, you could sign up to our open letter. We launched that last week. The previous speaker, Bianca, signed up to that, along with Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson, lots of celebrities but also lots of businesses. There's a lot of interest in this and a lot of momentum now. So sign up to our open letter. It just shows the banks that there's more and more pressure on getting them to stop this. And what we've seen just recently, so we sort of did an insider engagement with those 5 banks for about 6 months, telling them that a campaign was coming. And over the past 3 months, we've been running the campaign, and since we've been running it, we've seen Lloyd's make a commitment to stop direct project finance for fossil fuel expansion. Then HSBC came on board as well. So we've seen some early bits of progress now. And interestingly, when we launched the open letter last week to lots of media coverage the following day, I had HSBC on the phone trying to explain to me all the good things they're doing, and I'll meet with them again this week to really dive into that. So 2 things then for businesses. Have a look at new pension, is it aligned to Net Zero. If not, what more can you do about it? Do you have a green bank? If not, ask it to become one or switch to another bank, if you can. And then the final thing, if you're engaging with government, what we've asked government from the outset is to regulate for finance to be aligned to Net Zero. And the U.K. law of the land is that the country will align to Net Zero by 2050 and our finance needs to as well. So Alexis mentioned earlier that there is a transition plan task force working with businesses and with finance to work out what a good transition plan is to reduce emissions. The thing is, is when they come up with those plans, ideally, those plans should be mandatory so that finance aligns to Net Zero as well as business. And that's the only way ultimately we're going to make sure we don't drive climate change but tackle it. Thanks.

Wow, terrific stuff, Tony. And what I'm loving about the conversations we've had so far is how these things are sort of leaving already together. So I think what we're able to see is there actually is a sense of sort of joined up this already in place around a lot of these campaigns, a lot of these initiatives. There around trying to get businesses to take a stand and step forward. I'm just going to say, if there's anyone who has any questions from Tony, please pop them into the chat. I also just want to say I know there's a few people that have been dropping in and out. What we're going to do is we're going to have a Google document that we're going to try and use to try and capture a lot of the really specific calls to action. So we've heard some of them from each of our speakers so far, as well as some of the notes. So if you have missed some of the things in the chat or if you had to rejoin and don't have the full flow, don't worry. We are going to try and capture as much of it as possible so that you can refer back to all these really important actions, really important resources, really important calls to action. So maybe as people might be thinking about some questions they want to ask if Tony. Tony, I wondered if I could just jump in because you've been super clear. Here are the things that businesses can do. The Ella's Kitchen story is really interesting. I think it shows a really practical and very clear example of a business sort of responding and actually taking action. I wondered if you could share a little bit more of like the texture to the Ella's Kitchen story. Like what helps them really move forward. And are there any things -- pieces of advice that maybe other businesses can take on board from that experience? And part of me wants to know if that's going to be something that's also going to be written up that could be circulated in some way.

Sure, sure. I think the first thing then is that the staff are really engaged. So I think they're engaged with Ella's Kitchen as a business, it's model being B Corporation, trying to be sustainable as a business. And I think the staff we're excited about thinking about their money. So they signed on very early on to trying to align the scheme to Net Zero. We've produced a guide for businesses. So I'll try and put that in the chat after I finish speaking. And Ella's Kitchen sort of used that guide and then engage with their pension provider. And I think they were just unsatisfied with the kind of responses they were getting. So they hired PwC. So there was a cost there, and I think there may be ways to do it cheaper than that. But they hired PwC to look at the top pension providers and recommend who the greenest ones were. And they got 2 of them to make a pitch to the team and then they chose one of them. And then that final pension provider paid for the transfer, did the whole induction process with staff, and the staff are really delighted. So I think one key thing ingredient is engage your people. And I think we all know that if you want to hire great people to stay with you, you need a better sustainability offer both as a business, but you can do that also with your staff benefits, your pension. And if you're mindful of these things, knowing that your company is banking with Barclays, should be something that upsets you because it's been the biggest fossil fuel financier for a very long time. And it still is, and it hasn't responded to recent demands. So staff are concerned about your bank as well as the pension.

Super, super helpful. Thank you, Tony. And I think being able to really understand the things that are in place that can enable a business to engage in the space and then how they share the story more widely to bring more businesses. So I would just say I thought it was really great. I saw on, I think it was marked from Ella's Kitchen LinkedIn profile and making a big announcement on it as well. So I think, again, where and how we get businesses to take these steps, take the action, work in partnership and then also almost creating the culture change by sharing it widely, making it the norm. So I think if anyone's follow -- follow of course Make My Money Matter, but also if you want to sort of see how the CEO of Ella's Kitchen sort of has also brought that out through LinkedIn. It's worth checking out that post.

And I'll share the case study, Char, as well. There is a case study.

Fantastic. I also just want to point out, I think, Tony, you've put in the 2 links to the YouTube videos, I think those are probably Make My Money Matter. They are really, really good videos. I should probably disclose. As a Board member, I'll make my money matter. I'm a big, big fan of the work that's happening. But I think the videos are actually really quite compelling. They're humorous but they also really get at the key white. So again, those will be things that you'll see in the Google doc when it gets circulated. Any closing points, Tony, before we go over to Sophie from Ecosia?

No, I think that's great. Well if you can sign on to the open letter, that would be one great step and then explore your pension. It's powerful and if you can get it doing the right thing, you'll keep doing that for the long term.

Thank you so much, Tony. That's fantastic. So Sophie is our final speaker. And just to say we're going to have a little bit of time to save you some questions, but then also to move into a broader discussion about this group to get to know each other a little bit and to think about ways that we could come together and continue to support each other in the various work that we want to get involved in over the year. So we'll go to Sophie, and we'll have some questions for Sophie, and then we'll have a little bit of time in the round to have a broader discussion about how we might use this group going forward. Thanks so much.

Hi, everyone. I just want to say a big thank you to Char and Charlotte who are absolutely rock stars for putting this together. And also to you, Tony, because actually, we did sign the open letter. And I think especially for people like yourselves and also Charlotte and Matt, who did Businesses Stand Up, I mean it's really important for businesses like ours to be able to have these kinds of campaigns ready to go that we can sign, we can endorse, we can get involved with, et cetera. Because sometimes when you're in your business, a, there's a whole bit of kind of needs specific to the business area when it comes to policy, and sometimes it's easy to get kind of stuck in your area. And so kind of you guys really helped to bring us out of that kind of siloed space and work together across these issues, which are cross sectoral, across jurisdictional sometimes, and actually really fundamentally matter to the way our economy works, the systems change and also to the way that policy and politics and democracy works in the U.K. when it comes to things like the policing bill. So thank you for kind of helping to change the perspective on times of companies that work in certain sectors. So in my case, I work for Ecosia, we're a tech company. We're a search engine that plant trees. I am going to try and show my screen here. I've got a couple of kind of visual aids. Let's see if this one, If I can do this, in terms of the little presentation I put here. Let's see. Can you guys -- I'm sorry about all that. Okay, all right, let's just do this now. So for those of you who don't know Ecosia, we're known as a search engine that plants trees. We're basically a free and easy way for people to be climate active every day. So the idea of Ecosia started about 13 years ago with what would -- with the question being kind of what would it be like if tech actually -- large tech companies and use all of their profits to do good? So we decided that, well, I mean, decided about 13 years ago that we would use Google as a case study to see if we could create our own search engine and dedicate all the profits to climate change. That started off as a very small word-of-mouth kind of process, and now we are one of the largest global movements tackling climate change. We're one of the largest reforestation organizations in the world. We're the largest for endangered species when it comes to tree planting. And also in terms of the kind of the user base, we have 20 million users globally. 2 million of those are in the U.K., but across Europe, especially in Germany and France, Germany is where we found it. So we have a much bigger following there. But it's really across Europe and the U.S. where we have most of our users, and a lot of them -- most of them are under the age of 45, people who are really concerned about the environment, and we've done lots of use of testing. We know that when they use Ecosia, they also end up doing other -- taking other steps when it comes to their environmental activism. So that's really interesting. So we work as a platform, not just as an Internet platform so people can search with us, but also as a platform for advocacy when it comes to the environment. And when my role in particular is as the head of global policy, but also as the head of the U.K. So this is really relevant this kind of discussion around when activism and policy kind of come together from the global level but also at the local level. Sorry, these slides are a little bit of a mishmash of things. So excuse the kind of random fonts and stuff. But I think for Ecosia, when we think about where we can make the biggest change. One of the reasons why we signed the Make Your Money Matter campaign is because of the drivers of deforestation, there's absolutely no point in us planting trees if they're being ripped out at triple, quadruple, 100x the rate around the world. You can't replace an ancient woodland or unique ecosystems like biodiversity hotspots, which is where we largely plant with new trees. And so this is really important to us in terms of our core policy, global policy area, always has to be around the trees. And as Char likes to say, kind of being a Lorax speaking for the trees, and that's something that we really focus on. So it's really around biodiversity and everything kind of related to forests, wooded areas and biodiversity hotspots that, kind of thing. So that for me, it makes my job really easy when it comes to policy things to focus on. But then you have the wider kind of space. And so for our systems change, fundamentally, the drivers of deforestation, let's say, relate to things around commercial agriculture, how our banking system works in a number of different kind of consumption-based needs, et cetera, which means that we use our -- we use nature in a way, which is no longer sustainable and moves us beyond certain planetary boundaries. So for us, when we think about systems change, we end -- well, the legal, political and cultural kind of levels that we move between constantly. On the cultural piece, the fact that most of our users are under the age of 45, the fact that we can use tech in a number of ways to reach different groups is really important for us because we can act as this kind of space where we can help to move the die when it comes to the cultural elements and the storytelling and getting people involved in the environmental movement. Then we use that to instigate some kind of political change. Now because we are headquartered in Germany, we have traditionally focused on German kind of domestic policy but that is certainly changing. And increasingly, we're looking at the U.K. We've been involved in a number of different campaigns at a very, very local level, whether it's local councils, et cetera, to save certain bits of ancient woodland, which I'll come to you because we just had a big win this week that we managed to save a bit, a major woodland in London, which is awesome. And then on the legal side, which is an area I've kind of worked a lot in the past, looking at what are the laws and regulations that we can work towards to affect real systemic change, so some of you on this call are familiar with the Ecocide campaign, for example. How do we really protect nasty forestation globally? What kind of laws and interventions can we push towards, also at things like COP 27, COP 15, et cetera, to make that big systemic change. And the reason, I quote Char again, that as she does say hands, and in this case, all and all 3 of these are really important, and if you have the space within your company to be able to do that, I appreciate not every organization can look at those 3 different levels in terms of kind of time and resources. But certainly, for us, we like to try to take a kind of a holistic perspective on this and try to make interventions and kind of move across all 3 where we can. And also, we also appreciate everyone has their cause in context. So this is a principle that we use at Ecosia kind of define which areas we as individuals within the company want to work in. So for example, I'm based in London, in South London, there are certain local issues that I'm particularly passionate about, and they might be the country manager in Germany might be very much involved in the situation, for example, in Germany now with -- I don't know if you've seen some there's a mine that is going to take over a whole village. Lots of the people in the German office are out protesting and trying to protect that. This is a very kind of [indiscernible] idea in terms of how we work when it comes to policy. We are the search engine that plants tree. So therefore, we inherently kind of operate in 2 spaces when it comes to policy as a search engine across tech policy. I haven't kind of filled out some of these bits because there's a lot of kind of very specific tasks related to that. So that's around tech stuff. I mean as a tech company, we also are inherently involved in energy consumption and electricity. People use their electricity to use our products. So therefore, we have an interest in investing in renewable energy, of course, across all of the Scope 1, 2, 3 emissions. We're obviously across that. But then in other ways, too. So for example, we're quite, I don't know if ideological is the right word, but we have strong values within the company related to, let's say, fossil fuels. So when Russia invaded Ukraine, we invested $30 million in renewable energy in Germany to highlight that we need to get off the dependency on petro states such as Russia. And we quite often do kind of not stunts like that, but make significant strategic investments to highlight that there is another way of doing things when it comes to the system. So that's the kind of the tech side of things, I would say. Then on the aspect of us being research engine that plant's trees, like I said, there's no point in us planting trees if they're being ripped out at a vast rate. So everything has to really relate to the protection of trees. It's much better that we save those trees than plant new ones. So that's around reversing biodiversity loss. It's around restoration and reforestation. It's around community impact, it's around climate justice, of course, and it is around advocating for the transformational policy changes that we need. So that's really how I split up my time when it comes to my role in policy. In terms of kind of -- this is some of the stuff I nicked from one of our other presentations. But essentially in terms of like how we kind of talk about this internally, we all agree on certain values and things that we expect Ecosia pushing for. And we all recognize that our users, many of whom suffer from ecoanxiety are really frustrated with the lack of progress from politicians and other corporations who are not doing enough in various -- seem to be not doing enough in various kind of YouGov and other surveys show that the kind of the trust and the expectation certainly in the U.K. is incredibly low in terms of what we're seeing from the politicians in the U.K. specifically, but worldwide and we expect that trend to worsen over the next year or so. So our kind of mantra, I suppose, which has been the case since we did a brand refresh last year is really about us going all in that we have this decade of action essentially. And there's no point in being kind of shy beating on the bush around it. We need to work together to go all in for the planet. So that's really what we've kind of decided to do. I mean, also, I mean, the wildfires are particularly upsetting to see. We can't -- we could plant it. Top line is just us doing it by ourselves. Let's say, that's great. Working with other partners and indeed to have planted as many trees as we have, we do work with a vast range of partners across the world in order to do that, but we'd love to work with more businesses. And I can tell you how we could work together and some ideas potentially. But I mean, we'd love to work with you to try to solve this problem. So this is how we do it as a company just in terms -- in case you don't know. I mean, we've been giving away 100% of our profits, essentially, we're a nonprofit organization for the last few years. 80% of those have always gone into reforestation campaigns. And this has to do with -- in terms of our survival rate, we increased some of our monitoring standards to make sure that -- and actually, we're quite involved in something called a global biodiversity certification that will be launched at COP 28. But this is all around the tree planting communities be specific to that around raising standards here because, of course, they certainly need to be raised, and we don't do any carbon offsets, I should say and never have. This also involves looking at our business and with every search of Ecosia, a kilogram of carbon is removed and making sure that we produce double the amount of renewable energy that we need to by investing in electrical grids in Germany, but also now in the U.K. to support the energy transition. And we also do something which might be a bit controversial, but we do use our platform to call out large polluters. So this is, again, doing what we can with the space that we can to be bold. And we have also saying, which is never neutral. So if you are a large polluter, we have -- you'll see if you use Ecosia, say if in BP, for example, or Shell, you'll see like a blue tick sign. If you're a B-co., you have a green leaf and we are going to do another icon around large deforesters as well. So we're trying to use our product so that people have as much information around the climate crisis as possible. There's a number of green shopping things and features as well on our product. And highlighting to well, we've also moved beyond just replanting. So we invest heavily in the soil and regenerative agriculture. So we've done some big investments in trying to shift again, commercial agriculture away from deforesting and more kind of creating more -- investing in more sustainable ways of producing food and food security around the world. But essentially, this means that we are very much invested in holding politicians and institutions to account. And this is where we'd love to work more with you guys. And this keeps going on. Okay, so being transparent is also really important, I think, for our users as well. So we always make sure that we are being transparent with our financial reports. We publish them every year. I might just jump really quickly to what we can do together and not go through the rest of this presentation. But essentially, I think over the last 5 to 6, 7 years, what we've seen is a lot of universities and businesses, schools, hospitals reaching out to us to basically say that they'd like to become more green and sustainable and we'd like to use our search engine across their business. That's a very quick and easy thing that you guys can do to work kind of more closely with us to plant more trees and to help to end deforestation globally. I can give you some more information about that. So that's one thing is to use your tech for good. So there's a number of different applications and different products out there that can provide you with an alternative to some of the big, large tech companies who are not doing everything that they can be to fight climate change, and we certainly do. So that's one thing. But certainly, across the policy and advocacy space, be it in the U.K. or globally, we'd love to work with you as well on certain issues -- on all the issues that and Char and Charlotte are kind of suggesting through this group. But a number of different kind of ways that we can work together to protect forests globally, and you can always reach out to me if that's of interest. Maybe I'll stop there. There's loads more to say, but I definitely ran out of time.

Thanks, Sophie, that's great. Awesome. Thank you so much. So I'm just going to summarize what I think I heard and then we're going to move into a bit of discussion time. And if you have any particular questions for Sophie, please do put those in the chat. So what's been lovely there is we've stepped back and we've heard from 3 kind of large, more campaigning organizations talking a little bit about some of the work they're doing. We had Oxford Net Zero giving us a bit of a landscape analysis of what's going on around climate policy, particularly around Net Zero. We had She Changes Climate talking about the leadership that we can be advocating for on our own businesses and then advocating for globally, especially around the leadership of the COPs. And we've also had Tony sharing from Make My Money Matter about changes we can make inside our own organizations to the way we bank in our businesses to our pensions, but also again, broader campaigns we can sign like that open letter that Tony shared with us. And then what Sophie has done is lovely, is sort of zooming us into what it feels like to be a business in the space to how you can use your own voice as an organization. We've heard some fantastic ways that Ecosia use their product, but also use their voice to call out greenwashing, use that platform to share what they think is appropriate and what isn't and kind of bringing their customers with them on that, which is really interesting. And then some of that broader advocacy work that you were doing that we can work together on. So it's been a whirlwind. We've heard from lots of different ways in macro and micro ways that we can engage in business advocacy. If you have particular questions for Sophie and any of Ecosia's work, please do pop them in a chat. What I'd love to do just for our final 10 minutes is take a pause. This was an experiment. So just before Christmas, Char, Sophie and I started to talk about how could businesses coordinate. Matt and I have been wondering where we can next steward some of the energy that grew up from Business Stand Up, and we're really thinking is this space useful? So today, we invited some friends who are doing similar work to share their ideas. And now we'd love to hear from you. So Char is going to talk in a second just about her definition of business advocacy and how really starting to think about the broader role that businesses can play. And then I have some questions for you. So I'd love to hear. Are there campaigns that you're involved in that you'd love other businesses to know about on this call. You'll have a moment to put those in the chat so you can raise your hand if you'd like to share any vocally. We're then going to do a little poll around this space. Is it helpful? Would you like to come together? How regularly? What are the things you'd like to hear about. Today, we had a climate lens, there may be many other issues that you'd love us to kind of zoom in on as the year goes. So Char will kick us off just talking a little bit about the scene setting around how we might think about our voice. Then I'd love to ask you about any campaigns you're involved, and you start those in the chat now if you've got one you'd like to share. And there'll be a moment to raise hand as well if you'd just like to talk about anything you'd love people in this group to know about. And then we'll kind of circle back on how we may or may not meet going forward and anything you'd like to see on the agenda. So Char, speaking from your perspective, how are you starting to think in 2023 about how businesses can use their voice? We've heard about many different waves. We've heard about using our money, we've heard about engaging our employees, we've heard about joining external campaigns. What are you thinking about when you come to this call?

Well, thanks, Charlotte, and just a giant thank you to everyone for the energy of the speakers and the things that are in the chat. There's going to be a ton for us to digest. And I actually Charlotte, would love to move quite quickly into the open space. I just want to say, it's interesting, the metaphors that are all around you, right? Like over the course of this call, I've just had like a whole lot of really bright sunshine just shine directly at me. And I kind of feel like when I look at the screen, I kind of feel that we're a community. We're all being moved by this moment that really matters. And I just -- just like the sun gives us energy, I'm just finding like a ton of energy from all of you, all your attentive faces, all the comments that are coming into the chat. So sometimes you just have to acknowledge what's happening in nature kind of echoes actually how you're feeling on calls like this. I just noted my colleague from Natura & Co, Zoey, is on the line here. And I think what maybe I'll do is just to sort of share very, very briefly, the definition of advocacy that we're using at Natura & Co, and that's just been something we've been sort of building out through conversations with many of you that are on the line here. But in case it's helpful for us as you start thinking about the way forward and ideally like how this group could take shape, for us, we're really looking at advocacy about really identifying where we want to take a stand in those moments that really matter. And that's why Sophie, the map that you shared is really important. I think looking at ways in which we can almost build collective maps, knowing that we won't necessarily always intersect on all of them. But so we can see who's doing what, where and how and what the specific actions are. And so that's the other thing I've loved from this conversation. Every single speaker has had very, very clear call to actions, which, again, we will summarize and put into the Google doc that we'll circulate. So that's number one, take a stand in the moments that matter. Number two is about mobilizing people and really helping them to use their power in business as a force for good. And Bianca, I know you put a comment into the chat there. Like this is about recognizing the power that business has, and that's about engaging people both internally, and I think we've heard great examples of that, but also externally, thinking about ways in which if we are consumer-facing brands, the need for brands that are business to business. How do we use our power with our customers to help be a part of shaping the big culture changes that we know are needed. So again, mobilizing people to use their power as a force for good. And the last one is joining forces with others, because let's be honest, not a single business is going to be able to solve the problems of our world, right? They are too complex, they are too interconnected. So many of you know that I'm obsessed with this idea of the movement of movements, and I think that if we're really going to step up to this moment that matters and address things with systems lens, which is about changing the rules of the game, changing Sophie as you said, political, legal, cultural systems, then we have to find ways to join forces with others. So those are sort of 3 of the ingredients that Zoey and I and other members of the Natura & Co team are sort of working through when it comes to shaping our advocacy strategy. We also have sort of 5 principles we use and actually Sophie and I and Beth who's not on the line today, but is another friend and fellow traveler from Patagonia, we've been riffing on this idea of just being really clear of how do you build an advocacy policy that actually does fit with your business, and can bring people on board. And so we'll share a link to the piece that we're riffing on with that, but essentially it's about being authentic, it's about being ambitious, it's about agency which is about inspiring and desire and others to take action. It's about activism, right, and really recognizing the need for the level of action, which means working with movements and working in community with civil society. And then lastly, it's about ally-ship. So again, this idea of how we work in partnership. So we'll send more material on all of that, but again, I'm feeling the sun on my face, sun on my shoulder, sun from all of you. And I will turn it back over to you, Charlotte, to maybe lead us through what -- that idea of how we take this energy and channel it into something that we can keep engaged in going forward. As we all map out what our 2023 priorities and approaches are going to be when it comes to advocacy.

Thanks so much to get thinking about there, and I love those 5 As of authentic, ambitious, agency, activism and allyship. Really helpful to think about what would those 5 things look like in your business this year? What do you want to be authentic about? Where are you up for being ambitious? What agency do you have internally, externally? What can you do in the organizations you're already part of to really be active in community and who do you want to ally with. So they're really nice nudges for us. So thank you in the chat for anyone who's been sharing things that they're reading. I love that piece around Joan Alexander's book, Citizens. This is really interesting thinking about how we as businesses can demonstrate the citizen story and encourage it in the way that we lead. I am sharing also a link to a mailing list. So when Matt and I began to really steward some energy around the policing bill and the freedom to protest in the U.K., we kicked off a mailing list. Many of you are on that, and that's how you heard about this call. If you're not yet on that, and you would like to, then please do use that link I've just shared in the chat to join up so that we can keep sharing what we're doing in this group. What I'd love to do now is just take a little bit of a read of the room. So we have been wondering about convening a session like this, fairly regularly for people to share campaigns that they're working on to get ideas. And I wonder if you might be able to just take part in this poll to give me a sense. How regularly would a call like this be useful, if at all, to you? Could we help you by bringing that together? Okay, this is really helpful. We'll think about your feedback and see how we could put these calls in the diary. And then I'd also love to hear if there are any particular themes that you would love us to zoom in on future. So today, we talked a lot about climate campaigning and how we can use our agency as businesses financially using tech, all sorts of ways to advocate for climate. We'd love to hear if there are other themes that you would like us to zoom in on. So if there are themes, please do pop those in the chat. I'm just wondering if anyone else would just like to share a little bit about any campaigns they are involved and the love people to hear more about. Andy has already shared in the chat, and so has Becky about an opportunity. So anyone, just to wave their hand at me or raise hand if you'd like to share into the room about something that you'd like people to know about. Okay, I think we've got everything in the chat there. All right. So I'm seeing a range of votes coming through about how regularly people might like to meet, and we can do a little bit of experimenting over the next few months with that. Thank you so much for everyone who shared in the chat. I'm going to just quickly let you know how we've been taking notes today so that you'll be able to see it all coming together. So Char has been busily scribbling away behind the scenes just to capture everything that has been shared, and we'll be sharing this with you later, so that you have links to everything that people have shared with you. And I will keep -- I'll circulate that on the mailing list and with everybody who registered for this call. So I am just going to surface some of the things that are coming up in the call. So we've got a [indiscernible] hour, we've got Becky from the Alstom Jericho Chambers talking about the role of business in democracy, and we have Matt talking about One Blue Voice, so there are all sorts of things that you can get involved in here coming through. Fantastic.

Charlotte, I'd just like to raise a point that I can see that Sarah has just made here, and it's true. There is so much, right, and this idea of how we can streamline it by having a system, right? I see your hand, Sarah, I can see your body language on it. So I just want to acknowledge that energy. And I think there is a lot, there's a lot of work to do. There's a lot of things that we could come together on, but creating a systems to share it, hopefully, this example of just bringing people together is one. Hopefully, the Google doc we can try and create into a way that people can put links, put campaigns they might be working on. We can try and figure out a way of making sure that it's being managed and sent around when there's updates. So if anyone has any ideas on how to do that in an effective way, so that might be a way of helping with the streamlined process. And of course, I just will give the last point of making sure we also have some music to groove to while we're doing this important work and making it fun and joyful and full of positive energy. So I haven't quite gotten to the point of making the Spotify playlist, but that will also go on the Google doc. But for those of you who joined a little bit late, if you want to also throw in some music that again, just keeps you energized, keeps you moving for the work ahead, that would be great, and we'll keep that as an open playlist for people to add things as they go.

Thank you, Char. Okay. We are coming to the half hour. So thank you for joining us on this experimentational call. It's been phenomenal to see 54 people joining on a busy Monday at the end of January. We hear this appetite, and we're going to have a real think about how we can streamline. So we will share that Google doc with you with the summary and we'll come up with a way for you to share anything that you would love to be on people's radar, and we will keep in touch. So thank you so much for coming along, and we will let you know when we are next able to convene, and we'll be taking your votes for things that you would love us to explore next time. So thank you so much for taking a step back to think about how you might use your voice differently this year and what you really want to take a stand on. Thanks, everybody.

Thanks, everyone.

Thanks, everyone. Big thanks again to the speakers and to Charlotte for facilitating and energizing this conversation so beautifully. Thank you, Charlotte.

Thank you everyone, wishing you a great day as we all keep in touch.