Video transcript: Squaring the circle

Transcript

Anu Thomas (PwC): At PwC, we work with a range of companies from start-ups and scale ups to large corporates, and we wanted to convene the ecosystem to think about some of the biggest problems that we have in society today.

Jonathan Holmes (PwC): We’re bringing together manufacturers, we’re bringing together companies for whom the circular economy is a really live and interesting issue for them with some of our start-ups and bringing some of our PwC experts. We’re going to talk about the nature of recycling, we’re going to talk about greenwashing, we’re going to talk about the regulations and how they’re changing as well.

Anya Ahmad (Smith News): I’m Anya Ahmad, we’re from Smiths News, and at Smiths News we deliver around half of the country’s newspapers and magazines.

Harry Rhys Davies (Greyparrot): My name is Harry Davies. I’m Chief of Staff at Greyparrot, which is a London based start-up. We put cameras in recycling plants and we use artificial intelligence so we can tell what’s going through these sensors and what’s being recycled.

Tess Kermode (OLIO): I’m Tess Kermode from OLIO. OLIO is a free sharing app that enables businesses and neighbours to share things with each other instead of throwing them away.

James Pincus (PwC): We started a while ago a Future50 report where we identified 50 start-up companies that were doing something innovative around technology in solving the problem around net zero. And what we found it that these companies were doing interesting things, but as start-ups, they were struggling to really make a dent in some of the bigger problems.

Harry Rhys Davies (Greyparrot): My key takeaway from today I think would be seeing the other side of the table, understanding the bigger issues, being a little bit more inspired by everything else that’s going on in the sector. Being collaborative, I think is the key takeaway for me.

Tess Kermode (OLIO): We’re sort of at the start of a big wave of change, and that’s really exciting. We can find kind of what are the biggest challenges and how we solve them together, so rather than working in silos we’re able to make change go much faster.

Laura Middleton (PwC): It’s been an absolutely fascinating event. The key takeaway from me is how large organisations, industry leaders can work with some of the smaller start-ups who are doing something really, really innovative but need that support to scale.

Michael Williams (Smiths News): After being at this event and listening to everybody, it’s been interesting to see some of the mistakes we think we’ve probably made along the way but actually some of the steps we’ve taken, have started us on that journey. And so we’re kind of confident that we’re on the right track.

Tom Wright (PwC): It’s easy to draw diagrams and talk about silver bullet technologies, but the hard yards is working together to figure out grounded practical solutions. And I know it’s not an easy answer, but that’s the reality of solving them.

Anu Thomas (PwC): We’re going to continue to engage with the ecosystem with more events.

Cat Brown (PwC): And I think this goes alongside all the work we’re already doing with our clients from a human-led, tech-powered perspective to help them with their biggest ESG opportunities and challenges.

Jonathan Holmes (PwC): PwC is a great convener, it is really bang on purpose for us to put a safe space in place, bring some of our expertise to bear and really just let people have a really open discussion.