Consumer Culture: Why We Need to Buy Less (Josephine Philips)

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1:02has on the earth. And I'll tell you something really interesting, actually. For the next couple of weeks on Radical, we're talking to entrepreneurs, two people in their 20s, who are really smartly using technology to solve big problems. Next week, we've got Joe Seddon. He's trying to come up with a really smart fix for social mobility in modern Britain. And Josephine Phillips' platform, which is called Sojo, is basically trying to celebrate the whole culture and crafts work behind repairs and alterations and tailoring to make us more intentional and connected to the fashion choices that we make.

1:34At the heart of what she does is something that sounds pretty simple, but is in fact pretty radical. We all need, in her view, to consume a lot less.

1:50Josephine Phillips, welcome to Radical. Thank you for having me. Can I ask you two things about your incredible career before we talk about fast fashion? What did it mean when you were Forbes 30 under 30? it sort of says it everywhere if you google joseph phillips it says everywhere forbes 30 under 30 what does it actually mean it means it is purely purely title and purely vanity slash i'm obviously very grateful to forbes for choosing me um but it doesn't mean anything other than they've just acknowledged that you're doing something cool and you're young and you're doing it and it is purely title i think it helps potentially open doors makes you uh seem like you have credentials behind you um and it's just a way to kind of affirm that you're doing something different innovative changing kind of culture radical yeah there we go radical i'm like synonym for innovative what word could it be changing things taking on yeah um and you got that because so i should say for people who all have heard the introduction to this podcast but for people who don't know uh about sojo the incredible work you did could you just tell us briefly the kind of origin story of uh or just what you're trying to do and then we'll get into the problem because this podcast is largely a kind of problems and solutions podcast and we sort of realize that there are lots of big problems and it turns out the fashion industry's impact on the world is quite a big problem and you've got some pretty radical solutions what does sojo set out to do yeah so sojo in in terms of what we started with it was purely to modernize the clothing repair and tailoring industry and the premise behind that was the sector itself is incredibly archaic so we're talking it's been the same for the last 100 150 even more years um and i found personally as i started to kind of engage in the sustainable fashion space uh that to repair your clothes and tailor your clothes wasn't made for a young modern consumer who's so used to getting everything through technology or getting everything in a really easy and convenient way um and so the premise behind it was if we can make it cool easy technologically enabled and mainstream to repair and tailor clothes, more people will do it.

3:54But I'd say it's gone on, which we can get into, to the why behind Sojo being bigger in that it's more about slowing down our relationship with consumption. And I know that's quite radical, quite bold and quite big, but that's really truly the ethos behind it and ultimately the change that we're trying to make. Welcome to radical, because it is quite radical. Can I ask you a shamelessly brazen and honest question, which is, do you feel a little bit like you're kind of going against the tide of history? because one of the things about all product markets tend toward the idea of convenience and very, very powerful companies, in fact, the most powerful companies in human history have become incredibly adept at creating frictionless consumption.

4:34So do you feel a little bit like you're kind of trying to go up against one of the currents of history? Well, yes and no. So actually, Sojo is also built on trying to make repair more convenient. And frictionless. And frictionless. So actually, we're feeding into what people are already doing. fundamentally I was finding that I could book deliverers on my phone or I could book Ubers or I could book beauty treatments or whatever but if I wanted to get my clothes repaired I'd be like where do I go who do I go to do I do it myself do I mean some people are taking it back to you know their grandmas or aunties in West Africa or Asia to get it done and taking clothes across across the world I mean talk about inconvenient um so for me it was really about uh how can we get it so that actually we are making it just as simple as buying a new item to be able to go online say trousers rip in crotch and then we will collect it fulfill it and drop it back to you and like what's not convenient about that but what i would say is we are pushing against the grain of consumption and like the need for more and buying more and buying new and i think that also i think that's inherently linked to capitalism let's not get broad in terms of do you think do you think modern consumption uh and retail therapy and the idea that consuming stuff makes you feel good do you think it's a sort of moral failing do you think there's a sort of there are moral consequences to consumption which people don't think about what economists would call negative externalities that basically by consuming ever more we're doing things there's a kind of moral component to it and it's basically a bad thing to do i think there's two ways to approach it the first is that the i mean immorality is a really strong word and i really really don't want to point fingers at people for engaging in behaviors that they've been like forced into taught and I also have absolutely been party to it and also I'm party to behaviors that you've spoken about that are just it's just a bit easier to do it this way just now so I don't want to use the term moral or immoral in any way shape or form but what I would say is there are serious impacts to behaviors like consumption behaviors particularly in fashion which we'll get into have immoral impacts on the planet and also fundamentally also people and the people behind making our clothes and the systems that function run on are inherently based on inequality and injustices so you are feeding something negative um and then the other thing that i'd say is if we're not talking about morality and immorality we could speak about happiness and whether hyper consumption makes you happy and that's also a big question so let's be honest let's talk about under those two headings people and planet when you talk about the kind of consequences for people um are you talking there about uh or you're talking maybe you're talking about both of them on the one hand the um people who work in fashion and garment trades around the world 80 % of them are women, often on very low wages, sometimes in very poor conditions.

7:11That's a complicated thing about globalization and capitalism and supply chains. Are you thinking more about the people who actually are engaged in fashion, maybe in the rich world, who might have certain ideas of what is or isn't beautiful and the self-esteem issues and all of that that comes with it? So when you talk about the impact on people, what do you mean? Yeah, so I am talking about two types of people, typically when I'm speaking about it, And those are those who make our clothes and the ones actually who deal with it when we throw it away. So it's not necessarily that second group that you were speaking to.

7:42But if we're speaking at the beginning, I mean, you obviously just mentioned 80 percent women, women of color, largely global south. A lot of them work in the global south. And fundamentally, the percentage of them has been argued that it's about 2 percent that are on a living wage. So it's really, really small in terms of those who are being paid fairly for the work that they're doing. So inherently, it's a problematic business model for fast fashion to kind of be able to be so cheap because the labor is super cheap and you're not paying people fairly. And for me, that was actually my in to sustainable fashion was through a social lens.

8:15So I very much and still am an ardent feminist. And I found that my consumption habits of buying fast fashion clothing were completely misaligned from my female empowerment mentality when I was at university. And I just thought, oh, I'm actually feeding this like inequality that I'm fighting against in the Western world and try to make it more intersectional. And yeah, I try to kind of change. So there's a if you take a country like Bangladesh, which Bangladesh is one of the world's kind of main factories when it comes to fashion and a huge I mean millions, tens of millions potentially of women often work very bad conditions in that country.

8:52and there's a kind of sort of pro-globalization person or pro-capitalism person would say well if you didn't have the fashion industry in bangladesh they could just relocate to thailand or lao or cambodia or some other country and the people in bangladesh if you had to choose between uh the current jobs that they have in fashion with maybe sometimes poor conditions and poor pay versus not having that and bangladesh having a smaller economy it's better to have the choice than not to have the choice. Now, some people say, well, it's not much of a choice because they don't really get to, you know, have all the nice perks that we have.

9:25But some people would say that actually it's pro-Bangladesh, pro-those workers, pro, you know, being anti-poverty for those jobs to be there as opposed to being elsewhere. What would you say to that argument? I suppose it's like a race to the bottom argument. And I think it's almost like if we were to, the argument of if we were to increase taxes here, people, you know, the flight of rich people that then would go to other countries and be able to get less tax elsewhere. I believe in a global approach to equality and correct standards of kind of fair living wages and things. So I understand that it would take it out of Bangladesh and you could go somewhere else like China or Laos.

10:03But I think the approach should be from a capital, like from a corporate standpoint that we want to pay our workers fairly. And I fundamentally know that there is that margin for it to happen because the billions that are being made at the top can absolutely fund better and fairer wages. It's purely a margin game. And I think that it becomes an ethical choice. I understand that I'm not trying to argue that it should go from Bangladesh to another country. I'm trying to argue that it should be correct in all countries. Is there such a thing as sort of basically big fashion where, you know, the fashion industry is a huge global industry and you shouldn't sort of reduce it to one thing.

10:40But within it, There are some companies which are absolutely dominant, which have got these huge profit margins and are doing so basically on the backs of, you know, tens of millions of women who are working in dreadful conditions. 100%. And to be honest, I think that the parallels between what we're doing and what so many other incredible radical people are doing in other industries are very, very similar. The problems are socio-political, like the problems are structural and they are a cross sector. So the notion of paying really, really low wages and therefore having really, really high profits is something you will see across all industries.

11:16And I suppose the question is that model. And I think actually last year I went on a trip to the Amazon rainforest with Vaja, which is a sustainable shoewear company. And they pay five times the market rate for rubber purely from an ethical standpoint and decision making standpoint. And I think for me, it's about corporations choosing to do the right thing. And if they don't, it's about legislations forcing them to do the right thing. So forgive me, because believe it or not, I don't know a huge amount about fashion and I'm here to learn about it. Is there a big global movement to try and say something fundamentally has gone wrong with fashion and we need to think much harder about its impact on the people and the planet?

11:53Yes and no. I wouldn't go as broad as to saying it's big one, you know, singular movement. But we are seeing really incredible shifts that are happening in the industry in different ways. So fundamentally, and this is why ultimately we have ended up working with brands and facilitating repair solutions for brands themselves, corporations are already looking at how can we do better? Because fundamentally, the nature of something being unsustainable is that it cannot be sustained. So at some point, they know this isn't going to be the way that it can continue indefinitely. And they're looking, how can we make our business model more circular?

12:23How can we bring in circular solutions? So corporations and brands themselves are looking at what they can do. And on the other side, legislation is coming in, particularly in the EU, which unfortunately isn't the UK, but particularly in the EU legislation, for example, around EPR, which is extended producer responsibility, is coming in, which is essentially saying that the brands who make the clothes should be responsible for what happens at the end of their life. Whereas right now, the kind of linear model is once the sale button has been clicked and the brand has shipped it out, that's it. Who knows what happens?

12:51I'm not responsible. I don't have to pay for managing its waste. I don't know. I don't have to pay for the kind of environmental impacts of it going to landfill and things like that. Whereas extended producer responsibility is actually coming into effect to say brands need to be responsible for what they're putting into the world. And they end up do they do end up getting financial benefits, kind of, you know, tax. It's you pay less tax, essentially, if you've got repair services or if you're making your clothes with materials that are more natural versus more plastic, etc. Sounds pretty radical.

13:21I didn't know anything about that. So that's I mean, that's quite hard to measure in a way. But you said if there's some brand which is putting, you know, it's got these negative externalities and putting terrible things into rivers, for instance, they would have a financial incentive under this new legislation to be accountable for that and to reduce the pollution. Yes. I mean, to be honest, it's obviously in its absolute nascent stages. And your immediate reaction of how do we measure that is a big question, because actually the impacts of fashion. Obviously, we were speaking about even the people who make our clothes, but it's not even just the workers who are being impacted.

13:53It's the communities around the factories from air pollution. Yes, but also water pollution is a big one. And actually, even just the water usage is a big one. So I say this to say when we're talking about impact of fashion, it's so broad that actually trying to make people accountable for all the different ways and elements of its kind of impact on the planet and the people is really massive. But fundamentally, there are things that are happening. I mean, it's so broad and it's so bad. I mean, I've got to say, I mean, just give us your kind of overall sense of the things you're concerned about and then I'll reel off some stats.

14:25Yeah, we'll go stat for stat. I mean, it's completely. Okay, let's I'll start with a stat. Okay, I'll start with an absolutely, I mean, this is completely nutty bonkers, okay? Maybe it's not bonkers, this is just true. A March 2023 report, so we're talking about the impact of fashion on the planet. A March 2023 report by the United Nations Environment Programme said that fashion, the fashion industry is responsible for up to 10 % of annual global carbon emissions. 10 % of all carbon comes from fashion, right? that is as much as the emissions generated by the entire european union and that makes fashion the second biggest contributor to climate change after agriculture i'm amazed i've got more stats you give us something you give us something you're what i was going to say you firstly took my one um but what i'd also say what i'd also say is that it's more carbon emissions for example in the aviation industry and shipping industry combined and i think so often people really associate, or rightfully so, aviation and flights.

15:26I should use the term flights in terms of aviation in case it's just an obnoxious word to use, but they really associate carbon emissions with all the flights that happen, but fashion industry is more carbon emissions than that. And I think, yeah, people don't associate fashion with that because I think of the glossy exterior. Yes, I think of magazines. And people looking smiley. People looking happy. Catwalks and all this. Exactly. I want people to learn stuff listening to this podcast. This is all stuff I've learned. So according to the UN, The emissions from textile manufacturing alone are projected to rocket by 60 % in the next four years.

15:5985 % of all textiles go to dumps every year. Washing clothes releases 500 ,000 tonnes of microfibres into the ocean each year. That's the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles. I'm going to do more. In 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency said that landfills receive 11.3 million tonnes of textiles. I mean, fashion is basically in terms of impact on planet. As you say, it's an extraordinarily complicated thing. It's about communities. It's about energy. It's about water. But it's kind of got to a stage where just looking at that, fashion should sort of in carbon terms, carbon terms alone, be considered guilty until proven innocent.

16:38It's really bad. Absolutely. And not to continue adding to your list. No, I love it. I love a list. One that I speak to, because I think, again, And when we're speaking about our ability to change things and what we are actually capable of changing, I think sometimes when we speak about carbon emissions, it feels a little bit kind of removed from us as individuals. So I do speak about waste quite a lot as a way that we can or cannot have impact. So we produce about 92 million metric tons of clothing waste a year, kind of textile waste. And what I cross planet or Britain globally, that that is in terms of.

17:16weight more than the entire population of Europe so you're also speaking out carbon emissions of EU but if you've got every single person in Europe all together like everyone we're producing on on annual basis more clothing waste in terms of weight it's the definition of unsustainable year on year it's getting worse and it's continuing to get worse I thought the whole point of fashion used to be that it was seasonal like isn't fashion meant to be like there's four seasons a year whereas now it's kind of 52 seasons yeah yeah but isn't it isn't sort of the very idea of fashion is something that kind of comes fashion is a kind of forever fashion now it's kind of it's a kind of constantly updating thing probably massively accentuated by social media where you're constantly trying to keep up with this kind of the latest thing and out of nowhere some trend on tiktok or instagram come and say this is what you should do yeah i i could see why you might feel like you're kind of on the wrong side of history as well as part of a kind of resistance right yeah i mean to be honest again we are not to blame um you know we are being fed these things we're being fed these trends and actually exactly algorithmically and kind of um even you go out the door and it's everywhere you'll see constant adverts you're constantly bombarded with buying more and buying more clothing i think the other thing to speak to is yes we're maybe doing 52 seasons a year um but actually some ultra fast fashion brands are releasing i mean thousands of new styles a day to their websites which is really really hard to fathom of just like the churning out of new styles and new designs is definitely no longer four times a year and the timelessness that I think we used to have around fashion it is so rapidly it's essentially just a dispose it's a it's a disposable approach to clothing that is like one and done and one and done.

18:59Why has that happened I don't know enough about and I've not thought hard enough sorry about the history of the industry to know why would we go from so what what has that replaced so if if a single massive retailer or brand is now churning out thousands of new designs every day 50 years ago what was happening instead was it kind of there were fewer companies fewer brands and they are producing 10 a year well we were just buying less and we were keeping for longer so the brands themselves didn't have to come up with more and new i mean we're buying so much more and the majority of clothing, I mean you spoke to it, going to landfill within one year having been made or purchased or whatever.

19:35We're not wearing our clothes for longer periods of time. The actual garments themselves are being made with much less kind of approach to longevity and the quality of them is a lot lower so they're kind of breaking easier. It's just it's entirely shifted the way that we engage with clothing on the basis that people want more in many different ways and want it for cheaper and so that's just the way the industry has gone. Do you think the fashion industry has slightly suffered from the fact that there's a kind of high fashion, glossy catwalk stuff with people looking sad about things? And then there's a deeper, there's a deeper, I think of, because it's so interesting.

20:10We had Edward Enniffel on this podcast and Edward Enniffel, I've seen a bit since and it's amazing. He talks about kind of, he's got this very kind of romantic idea, particularly of African fashion and African beauty, you know, he uses the word bodacious, which I've never used before. But he really, when he was talking about fashion, he was almost talking about it I would think of it almost as the garment industry, the kind of crafts people who are in the business of like repairs and alterations and sewing and a skill which is received from sort of generations. And I know that's what Sojo is about, where you kind of actually have this kind of practical wisdom that allows you to make things.

20:50and I think maybe if we could sort of shift the balance in their minds of people like me who don't know very much about it from fashion as sort of high fashion which is big brands, seasonal catwalks to more kind of people, often women but not only women who are kind of sewing and crafting things maybe people would think about it in a different way. 100%. I think a big reason that fashion is able to exist in this way where it's so hyper consumptive and it's so cheap is because people are dissociated from who's making their clothing and like they're dissociated from the story of the clothing. They don't even, I mean, honestly, there's a big misunderstanding that clothing is, quite often if it's made from polyester, et cetera, it's made from fossil fuels.

21:30So if we're speaking about fossil fuels being a problem for the world, the reason that people aren't saying that fashion is bad is because they actually don't know that the fossil fuel industry is actually making the clothes themselves and that polyester is plastic and that polyester is, it's like throwing a plastic bottle, which again, people would just be like, that's negative. if you're throwing a plastic dress into landfill it's the same it will live the same lifetime because it's made of plastic they're dissociated from that and they're dissociated from the people and the the time that has gone into something and the kind of um yeah the material the growth i i speak a lot about if you were to actually look at the journey of your item getting to you there in that moment and you were to see everything from whether it be seeds being planted or even if you were to see the fracking or you were to see and understand the person who sowed it and the different journeys it's gone through in terms of dying or weaving or whatever and then all its journey there to you maybe you wouldn't throw it away after one where let's talk about some solutions radical and otherwise yeah there we go it's enough negativity yeah yeah no there's a way forward and then and you know it's a really interesting thing part of the genuinely part of the reason we set up this podcast is you know we live in this era of what feels like kind of a lot of doom and gloom frankly a lot of kind of huge giant forces that make it feel like we don't have much power or agency to affect our circumstances.

22:45And actually what people really, really want is a feeling that they can make better decisions and they can improve the world. And they don't have to just be passive. They can be active and try and improve things. And a lot of people who will listen to this will know about you, will know about Sojo, would like to be better. You know, they'd like to kind of actually, they'd like to actually kind of reduce their impact on the world. And I wonder if we could talk about some solutions in almost like on three levels. There's what can states and legislation do. That sounds really interesting, that European legislation.

23:14There's also what you can do in terms of tax incentives and what you can do in terms of governments getting behind certain brands. There's what you can do at the social level, in terms of what just becomes a social norm, particularly through social media. And then there's individuals. I mean, if we do that in reverse order, how can individuals reduce their impact on the world? Or, put it another way, increase their impact on the world by reducing the negative impact of their fashion choices there are many many many different ways to engage in a more um yeah a less impact and less negatively impactful relationship with your clothing and fashion essentially having realized that i wanted to engage with fashion differently i turned to secondhand clothes as my first port of call because fundamentally in that and that's what i've realized is it's a better way to consume but it's still consuming so i still got my hit of like buying all the time and we're going back now but I was by nature of indoctrination really into buying clothing really into shopping and in choosing that I wanted to do it better I moved to secondhand clothes now we all know that you know secondhand is growing two three times faster than firsthand fashion vintage is did we know that so we there we go so let's talk about this when you say secondhand fashion there will be some people particularly some of our older listeners who might think what you're talking about is going to the charity shop at the end of the road that's not what you're talking about what are you talking about when you say secondhand fashion yep so there's been particularly over the last decade plus a really really big movement of startups and ultimately scale-ups and now big companies and retailers who sell and or mark and or are marketplaces for second-hand clothing and the likes of those would be depop was a big one uh ebay everyone knows ebay um they've really leaned into the pre-loved fashion side of things you've got vestia collective what does pre-loved mean so pre-loved is the time that ebay uses to say somebody has worn it and loved it before and it's a it's a more positive spin on secondhand which as you rightly say i was feeling pre-loved by my children this morning okay so pre-loved on ebay this vintage yeah vintage bestia for example is a luxury secondhand marketplace you go there to get luxury items designer items secondhand and essentially in a lot of the circumstances it's someone selling it to someone else and they're just a platform for that so it's very much a circular economy of i own a jumper that i no longer want i put it up on vintage you buy it and then you give it a new lease of life and the platform takes a cut yeah the platform takes a cut and that business model secondhand fashion online so if it be i mean there'll be people listening to this who are kind of incredibly excited because they think you know that luxury you know um jumper or cardigan uh that i wanted to buy uh which i couldn't afford uh down the old high street i can get online from someone and they like the idea of doing it because it's circular fashion they like the idea of kind of reusing something that was pre-loved um and they can go to online retailers and do that they may not have known what you just said which is that second-hand fashion is growing what you said two to three times faster is that just online or generally that whole industry that's generally um and actually it used to be it used to be higher because i remember when i was um fundraising the statistic was higher but at the moment it's about two to three times faster it's growing about 20 to 30 percent year on year um so people buying into to resale i mean vintage has had an absolutely astronomical rise um over the years and now i I think they're in 20 European countries and you people must have seen the adverts and everything.

26:34But actually about how many? I think they've got about 18 million users in the UK. So we're talking like, what is that as a percentage of our population? Well, that's about nearly half of adults. It's like a third. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of Gen Z and younger generations on there, but it's a really high proportion of our population. When you're a young entrepreneur, you're meant to be really good at arithmetic, aren't you? You're meant to be like that. Oh my God. It's that moment in Dragon's Den where they go, what percentage is your turnover? They all go, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

27:01It's not that I'm bad at maths. It's that I didn't actually know the population of the UK. I was like, is it 60? I think it's 56 to 60. But I then tried to go like, oh, there's about 40 million adults. 18 is nearly half to 40. Arithmetic's meant to be my thing. Anyway, it's about maybe close to half to an adult. The point is it's a lot. Yeah. So in general, it's a massive, massively growing industry and people are loving it for many reasons. One of them is that, as you say, you can get something cheaper than if you were to get it and buy it firsthand. But the other is you're actually buying something that is more unique than the styles that are being sold to everyone on the high street.

27:31Okay. So using that, you know, riding the wave of that, you know, nice frictionless buying online in some ways, but part of the circular economy is one thing. Coming to Sojo and similar companies where you basically say, I've got, it's a kind of mindset shift, isn't it? Which says, I've got these jeans, which are, you know, wearing away at the, is it really inappropriate to talk about crotches? You mentioned crotches. I did. It's because it's a common one. It's a common one. I thought you might relate. It is a common one. Yes, well, it's true. Well, actually, funny enough, now I've lost a bit of weight.

28:03It doesn't have so much. But I used to wear jeans that were far too, there was, in about 2010, there was this big skinny jeans thing. And if you've got my rotund physique, you don't want to wear skinny jeans. But also, if you do wear skinny jeans, they do all go in that area. And you basically want to think of the retardation or the kind of decline or kind of problems with clothes as just part of the stage of the clothes journey, right? It's just like, actually, there's a better way forward just to get them repaired. 100%. And I think we're so used to repairing other things, you know, if, for example, our dishwasher breaks or even if we have something wrong with the keyboard part of our laptop, we're not going to replace the whole thing.

28:42We want to fix that one element of it. And I think the reason that it's been different with fashion is because we've been taught to approach fashion in the belief that it is disposable. Like that's the problem. That's the inherent problem with it being cheap. And that's the inherent problem with it being fast fashion, ultra fast fashion is you can buy it and you can throw it away. So that's why it's a cultural shift. And we spoke to the fact that obviously I got into secondhand clothing. But as you say, the next stage to consumption and your relationship with consumption in fashion, it might go from firsthand clothing to secondhand clothing and buying just as much.

29:11But my next stage of the journey was, do I need to be buying at all? And by at all, I mean, obviously a lot less. And then if that is the case, you then start looking at what you already own. You think, how can I love this correctly? Keep it for a long time. Aren't there just to be really frank about this? Aren't there a lot of very, very, very powerful companies who need you to fail? Because those companies, I don't mean this is some sort of conspiracy, but those companies thrive on the idea that they can create through marketing and advertising and new campaigns a desire. I mean, advertising, which is a form of the old persuasion industry, is a way of manufacturing demand by making people feel that they need something, which perhaps they don't need.

29:56And actually, they just want it. They don't need it, but they want it. And, you know, there are literally hundreds of billions of pounds, maybe more trillions in very powerful companies manufacturing this desire for the latest thing, which even if it's disposable from their point of view, if you bought that latest thing, they've won. and along comes Josephine and says you don't need that latest thing and they're like well actually maybe you do and here's a brand campaign which we're going to get a famous person to promote on Instagram to say actually yes you do need those new trainers yes and no in that if we're thinking about the future so yes of course but there's something for example called the right to repair which is another legislative move in the in the in the EU which is about and it started in the technological industry so we're talking about like technological devices where you have a right to be able to repair it.

30:46Heard of this? Yes, where essentially these companies, let's not name them, let's say a big tech company, the planned obsolescence in the item itself means it will not be functioning that well in a couple of years. But not only that, if it does break, they don't give access to the parts. They make it really hard to open it. They are very gatekeepy in terms of how it should be repaired and things. Whereas the right to repair says those parts need to be ready available so that you just have to replace the part and not the whole item. and also the knowledge and or ability to actually repair it needs to be ensured by the company who are making it, which is amazing.

31:20So in terms of legislation supporting the fact that they shouldn't be trying to, as you say, like quash the repair industry is really important. And then the other element to it as well, which is why we're actually working with brands themselves, is if we're thinking about a future where EPR exists, it means that they have to be rethinking their business models. EPR, extended producer responsibility. So if there's a future in which brands have to be responsible for the end of their life of the garment, they then will inherently want to include repair as part of their service offering to their customers.