Purposeful plots, Behavioural crisis, Wellbeing, TNFD & Bump

1. Purposeful plots

Film and television can change our perspectives, impact our opinions, and spark conversation. They’ve long been a powerful took for behaviour change (we make good use of them in our own multi-channel behaviour change programme SKY Girls.) ITV’s latest hit ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’ has served as a great reminder of just how much good storytelling can achieve. By dramatizing one of the widest miscarriages of justice in British history—where postal workers fought accusations of financial mismanagement due to a faulty computer system, Horizon—the series brought renewed public attention to an issue that had been widely covered in the news over the past two decades.

Director Gwyneth Hughes rightly emphasizes the unique power of drama to engage audiences, allowing them to 'be there when it happens' rather than passively consuming accounts in journalism or documentaries. This immersive quality heightens emotional engagement, making it a potent tool for communicating complex topics and societal challenges.

For those looking to learn more about how to use storytelling, Dr. Rory Padfield's has developed the Critical Sustainability Stories Tool (CriSS), which adds a structured approach to purpose-led filmmaking. Designed for professional storytellers, CriSS comprises six key topic areas—Critical Activity, Audience, Storytelling Journey, Context, Quality of Information, and Justice—each with open-ended questions related to sustainability and climate change. This tool serves as an organizing framework, prompting storytellers to reflect on the desired impact of their narratives.

In a landscape saturated with entertainment options, the ability to merge entertainment with meaningful narratives positions film and television as influential tools for shaping discourse and fostering positive societal change. The stage is set, and as we anticipate the next compelling narrative, it's clear that the impact of purpose-driven storytelling extends far beyond the screen.

2. Rewiring sustainability

While there is the occasional good news story on emissions reductions, our addiction to fossil fuels continues to break records. We’re pretty far away from the scale of reductions we need to avoid dangerous warming.?

And while there has been progress developing renewable energy and improving efficiency, a recent paper suggests that our approach to managing greenhouse gas emissions is a sticking plaster over the issues. The authors suggest that a ‘human behavioural crisis’ is at the root of the ecological problems we see, driven by three factors: economic growth, marketing, and pronatalism.??

It makes for a very interesting read. The interdisciplinary team applies an understanding of human behaviour to the social, economic and demographic drivers of our ecological problems, suggesting that tendencies to seek pleasure and avoid pain, acquire resources and display status and appeal to others have been exploited to the extent that they’re now dangerous for us.?

And, in dissecting these factors, the authors suggest we can instead use them to build a sustainable world, starting with more interdisciplinary collaboration involving social scientists and the practitioners of social and behavioural sciences.?

The paper is a bold critique of mainstream thinking and invokes some of the big questions that are inherent to the degrowth movement and wellbeing economics – what is ‘enough’, what growth do we want and for whom???

The authors are under no illusions about the fact that it will be uncomfortable to recognise and change the factors that influence our collective psyche and norms around consumption, reproduction and waste. But these may well be our best chance of ‘unlocking a truly prosperous and sustainable future for humans on Earth’

3. Is work wellbeing working well?

How does your workplace support your wellbeing? Over half of UK employers have adopted formal staff wellbeing strategies, which often offer perks like mindfulness apps, yoga classes, life coaching, stress management training. Whilst these can seem attractive, recent research has shown that these initiatives actually do little to boost employee's mental health and wellbeing.?

The study published by the Industrial Relations Journal, was based on survey data from 46,336 workers in 233 organizations in the UK. Across multiple subjective wellbeing indicators, employees who participated in individual-level mental wellbeing interventions appeared no better off than employees who did not. This result was consistent across different types of workers and sectors.

This doesn’t come as a huge surprise to us. We have spoken before about how workplace wellbeing issues can’t be fixed by just focusing on individual initiatives. If you really want to improve areas such as mental health, sense of belonging, and burnout, then the root causes of these within the organisation need to be changed. This recent study adds weight to this argument, being the largest of its kind on across hundreds of organisations.

As the study's author, William Fleming at the 英国牛津大学 , points out "there's growing consensus that organisations have to change the workplace and not just the worker." This means initiatives providing more flexibility in when and where you work, increased job security, better resourcing to manage overtime, improved performance reviews and management practices.

We hope these findings spur employers to think again about the wellbeing initiatives to invest in that are going to have an impact for their employees, and therefore the work they do.?

4. A great LEAP forward

As the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos comes to a close, one positive outcome is that 320 companies have stepped forward as early adopters of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). This cohort includes leading companies, representing four trillion dollars in market capitalisation, and over one hundred financial institutions. Organisations including Heathrow and 瑞银集团 have agreed to adopt the LEAP approach and publish TNFD-aligned disclosures as part of their annual corporate reporting for FY2023, FY2024 or FY2025.

So why is it important? This announcement is a key milestone in the journey to nature positive, signalling that a diverse range of investors, lenders, insurers, and companies are recognising that their business models and portfolios are highly dependent on both nature and climate, and that efforts to identify and manage nature-related risks and opportunities are crucial. The voluntary uptake of the TNFD disclosure recommendations at such speed and scale (since they were only released four months ago) is an encouraging step in the right direction and paves the way for more companies to act in the future.

The importance of nature and the need to protect and restore the environment is made ever clearer with the release of the Global Risks Report 2024. This outlines how the top four of the most severe risks expected over the next ten-year period are all environmental: extreme weather events, critical change to Earth systems, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse and natural resource shortages. As such, nature and biodiversity are rapidly rising up the global to-do list.

Ultimately, these announcements send a clear signal: nature matters, and action is needed now. So if you’re reading this and wondering how to make a start with your nature journey, we’re here to help!

5. The Goods: Bump

Food waste happens for all sorts of reasons: overbuying, poor meal planning and troublesome expiry and best before labels. Solutions to overbuying and meal planning are in your hands, but defying date labels might require a bit of help.?

Date labels are often misinterpreted. You may have caught the news last autumn that Sainsbury’s swapped use-by dates for best-before dates across its milk range to prevent wasting milk that is perfectly safe to consume – and this message should resonate across other foodstuffs too.??

Enter Mimica , who have produced the Bump Cap: a temperature-sensitive cap that gives you a real time indication of the freshness of your food and drink. The Bump Cap encourages you to store food and drink at the right temperature, reducing waste by changing the cap’s texture (to bumpy!) when it is no longer safe for consumption.??

Bump Caps are already fighting waste with the protein drinks brand EXALT – a fan favourite of our CEO, Giles Gibbons – increasing the use-by date by up to four days. Bump is also compatible with meat and seafood, with current studies suggesting that a Bump Tag can extend the life of salmon, prawns and cod by up to six days.??

Interestingly, Bump also conducted research on a bump indicator to help the monitoring and storage of Covid-19 vaccines, so they were kept safe in developing countries prone to power outages. They’re definitely hard at work, looking to integrate their technology on a wide variety of products and packaging.??

We’re all for supporting innovative and sustainable tech like this, and if you are too, be sure to check out and support their investment campaign on CrowdCube