 Posts, planets and economies as a super important topic that we're going to discuss today and I'm really pleased that we have three expert panelists who are joining us today who are going to go in depth about what the circular economy is. What it means for the postal sector and the opportunities for the postal sector to be part of the circular economy to enable the circular economy and do some good for the planet. It's, as you all know, a Zoom webinar, so please don't wait until the very end to ask your questions. If you have questions as you go on, go to the Q&A section which is somewhere on your screen, probably down towards the bottom of your screen, in the Q&A section, ask your questions in there and I'll keep an eye on the questions and if they're good, I'll put them to our panelists. I'm making it sound like I'm a little bit elitist there but no. Ask your questions as we go along, don't wait until the end and it'll help us stimulate the discussion as we go along. As I said, we've got three great panelists today. They're going to share some great knowledge and expertise with us. So it's an opportunity to ask the questions that you want answered to help you, whether you're a postal operator, whether you're a government, whether you're a regulator, whatever role you have in the postal sector to help enable and benefit from the concepts of the circular economy. Well, I might now take the opportunity to introduce our three panelists. First joining us is Janet Salem. Janet has been working with the United Nations on environmental sustainability over the last 16 years and is currently focused on circular economy and innovation. She established the Asia Circular Economy Leadership Academy and the Asia Pacific Low Carbon Lifestyles Challenge, a startup competition for entrepreneurs with alternatives to single-use plastics and carbon-intensive products. So, Janet, welcome. Great to have you with us. Next is Stefan Sikas. Stefan, and many of you would recall that I interviewed Stefan on the UPU voicemail podcast. Well, when was it, Stefan? Two months ago. Time flies when you're having fun, wasn't it, mate? Stefan Sikas is managing director in the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, or UNIDO, as some of you would know it, where he is responsible for environment and energy. He and his organization have for many years been strongly engaged in the circular economy. This is because the UNIDO sees circular economy as a rare opportunity to simultaneously boost economic development and help the environment, including but not limited to combating climate change. A phrase is going to come up during a conversation today. No doubt Stefan, welcome. And last but not least, James Chinmudi. James is co-founder and CEO of Sendal, a global parcel delivery service for small business dedicated to delivering shipping that's good for the world. James, that sounds like a tagline you've just made me read out. DRODS Sendal is the first 100% national carbon and neutral delivery service in the US and Australia. That was Australia's first technology B corporation. Previously, James held roles as executive director of development at the CSIRO as well as Australia's national research agency. He was co-chair of the United Nations Environment Program Youth Council and Australian National Commissioner for UNESCO and co-chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Digital Economy and Society. He's an expert and leading thinker on the interface between sustainability and innovation. And that's key. It's got what we're going to talk about today as well. It's that innovation, sustainability and opportunities. And is the co-author of the sixth wave, How to Succeed in a Resource Limited World, probably available on Amazon or something like that. I haven't introduced myself, everybody. That's the arrogance of the man. I assume that everybody knows me. My name's Ian Kerr. I'm the host of the UPU voicemail podcast. I'm also host of the Postal Hub podcast and co-host of the Last Mile Profits video series. Or just Google me and you'll see all the interesting and unusual things that I get up to. So welcome to everybody from wherever you are around the world. People from South Sudan, Bhutan, welcome. And wherever you are in the world, whatever time zone you're in, great to have you with. If you're in New Zealand, you might already be in your pajamas. Who knows? So enough of that idle chit chat. Let's get stuck into things. Janet, now I've given you that great introduction. How about you'd be so kind to just share with us some thoughts on what the circular economy is and maybe perhaps how it relates to the logistics and postal sector. Yeah. Thanks so much, Ian. Gosh, you've got a good voice for podcasts. I'm going to have to find that. Let me start. Hopefully that's sharing, right? Let me start with just a few little visuals on circular economy. So, yeah, nice to see you all. I'm Colleen from Sydney and from the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. What I wanted to run through was why is the future going to be more circular? And there are a lot of rationales for it on environmental grounds because processing too many materials that are going to be used once or headed to landfill certainly has a lot of environmental impacts, contributes to climate change, particularly through scope 3 emissions and causes a lot of waste and pollution. I don't want that day-to-day in my job, but sometimes that doesn't convince people. So I'm going to give you the non-environmental reasons why all of these products here, which are currently designed to be linear, are in the future going to be circular. So first of all, the linear economy works like this. You take resources out of the ground. They look a little bit like this in the case of phones. And then we make perfect products for the point of sale. That particular optimization is just for the point where a purchase is made, but of course, down the track it ends up something like this and there's no way to bring it back into the economy, really. So what does that mean? It means in 2015 we took 80 billion tonnes of materials out of the earth through mining, agriculture, forestry, fisheries and at this rate we're heading towards almost double that. So just try to imagine doubling all mining, agriculture, forestry and fishery. I think no one really believes that's going to work. So there's a number of reasons why. The first is scarcity. There is actually geological scarcity. Are we going to run out of all of these minerals? Maybe not, but that doesn't mean that we don't have scarcity. One of the indicators of that is that all grades are declining. We used to be able to pull copper out of the ground at an all grade of 1.6% and now it's getting closer to 0.9% so almost double the amount of materials need to come out of the ground to get the same output. The mines, all the good mines are gone. Mines in the middle of nowhere, easy to access, et cetera. Now we have to get a little tricky so the mines are also getting deeper. These bubbles show the depth and size of different ore grades. That's going to be more expensive. Also, the deposits are now in increasingly awkward places. So we're seeing the cases of significant mining and community conflict increasing over time. The deposits are where they are and happen to overlap with where people are. So sometimes they're in really awkward places. Sometimes I say, what do asteroids, the deep sea and cute Swedish towns have in common? They are all fair game for mining. So that's how much we're looking for new materials to feed this linear economy. They are all locations where there is resource extraction. There is also geopolitical scarcity. So the deposits are not spread equally. So some countries have a monopoly on some critical materials, particularly for minerals and metals. And that's why all of these reasons combined, we're not going to have a linear economy in the future. They'll be increasing pressure for a circular economy. So what do people think of when they think of a circular economy recycling? Well, there's actually a lot of different circular economy strategies. So I just wanted to give a brief overview. And don't worry, I won't go too into details. But I'd say that there's five different categories. Consuming means it's gone. It might be some forms of waste. Whereas using means that we're not actually consuming it. So what we can do is to stop all of these lines into the waste and emissions. We can circle it back up the chain, up the supply chain through different strategies. The first one is just low emission production and design. So getting switching from switching to renewables. Those non-renewables are limited, as I mentioned. Digitizing, switching to refill. Now for the postal, now something I've gotten relevant. For the postal sector, it makes a big difference where the refill is happening. It can either happen at home or at the retailer. So postal is getting involved in delivering sachets and refills. Also matters who does it. Is it the user or the producer? Product service systems where instead of bikes, you use the bikes. Shifting things to be compostable or just having low emission production in general. Then you have this first loop, which is the highest value loop. And it doesn't yet involve the postal sector as much. It's about one user and with themselves. So it's a really a matter of extending a product lifespan, repairing things, restyling things, going for multifunctional devices that replace other things or clothing, say, or buying timeless items that don't become socially obsolete. Now where the postal sector is now really ramping up is in the second loop, where the item is not used all the time by a user. It goes back to the service provider and then to a new user. So we're seeing a huge surge in the swap market, which is peer to peer, or secondhand retail where the product goes back to that service provider. They may have purchased it or provide the platform to get to a new user. Or there's rental, we've seen clothing rental, bike rental, share economy, or donations when you think something doesn't really have a sale value. And that's where I think it's going to be really interesting. I will say that there's another loop. If once a product is not usable in its current format, you can either refurbish it where you fix it up, make it new, or you can remanufacture it, which is now the big trend, which is to bring it up to that next gen. Or finally, the lowest value loop is to render a product as a mere set of parts or materials. So that's the recycling loop where you can either upcycle, recycle, or downcycle. So I will pause there and just finish with just saying that these loops depend a lot on data and logistics. So all of these loops are moving things around and that needs to be optimized. It's currently not very easy to do that and not very efficient. So here comes the postal sector with all the solutions handing it back to you, Ian. Oh, you're on a mute. Yes. There we go. Sorry about that. Everybody dismissed my witty joke that I just made. Sorry, everybody. I didn't really make a witty joke. No, thank you very much, Janet, for that excellent overview of the circular economy concept and indeed sharing how the postal sector can play a role in this model. So I won't waste time on any further comments from me. I'll hand straight over to you, Stefan, if you'd like to make some opening remarks talking about why the future has to be circular and any other comments you might have that are relevant to the logistics world. And even if you have an example that you'd like to share with us, Stefan, over to you. Thank you so much. And I will also use the opportunity offered by zoom to share my screen. And in doing so, I take effectively another way of depicting a circular economy and maybe add a little bit different to the accent to what just Janet has explained. You see in the middle of the picture, essentially the circular economy you can make different graphs but essentially comes to the same thing. All of this is about product life and if you take a step back and don't bother about the details for a moment. What you have going into the product is resources what you end up with is waste and what you want to have out of it is utility. These are essentially your your critical your critical elements, and essentially when people talk about resource efficiency or something like that they refer to effectively the amount of resources taken to achieve a certain utility. And if you use less resources in then you get less waste out. And the way to do that is to circulate the resources endlessly through the product life repeated and repeated. Now, from my perspective and what I can see the logistics sector that we look at is very much linked to the utility end of the spectrum or let's say they are the immediate utilities that they are in particular postal operators with their with their limitations on size, and with their extremely good outreach to many consumers is, of course, an area where specific opportunities arise a lot in my view. If you look at this overall picture and I don't need to go into the details I believe, other than saying, indeed after the distribution of the first of the product to the first user, and then in the use phase you have to repair the reuse the sector as said before. And why I have a different take same message different takes and Janet has to the question of resources for pictures here. You see on the top left copper mine actually and forestry top right is a palm oil plantation steel production in the middle of the bottom and on the right side petrochemical plant in this case plastic production. You see on the bottom. What do all of these tell us that you cannot create resources without doing things to nature in the planet. And I think we learned if you if you look at what what's environmental movement did over the last maybe 50 years and we learned for maybe the last 25 still learning that actually the globe has certain limits that means that plantations like that copper mines like that are not a dot in the endless surface of the earth, but that they're big enough to actually make a substantial difference to a degree that the earth changes its characteristics. And the energy supply you can see and producing here still I would have loved to find a picture for aluminum but I didn't. The steel is fine, you can see you can just see how much energy goes into it so why not using the steel, the palm oil, the copper or the plastics, more efficiently than we do and with that, creating an immediate and massive drop in impact. You can in the production of any of these increase your efficiency as much as you want the most efficient way is always to avoid avoid using the product in the first place. The circular economy can avoid tremendous amount of resources. If you're extending the lifetime of any product by a factor of two. You have saved half of the resources half. I'm not talking about 5% improvement and efficiency of 10, you have half your resources. But well, very strictly speaking maybe Ted less than that because you have certain costs going in the circular economy work but more or less that is accurate. And if you manage to add 234 lives to the lifetime of your product, it's even stronger so. So this is why circular economy is needed. And actually, if you look at the numbers. You've probably arrived from publication from the emf and material economics from Sweden. If you look at it and if you look at climate change. Essentially the energy side is linked to about 55% of the two emissions products to around 45%. There are many ways of calculating that you might end up three or four or 5% less all right, but it doesn't matter if you. If you want to impact on our overall emissions, you have to deal with products and that means you have to deal with resources. That's essential and in order to deal with resources the best way of doing a discipline. So that is the why will it stay with us. And then how does it relate to the postal sector so last year. Christmas we bought a new computer we wanted to buy new computer computer so we found this. I tried to eliminate every mentioning which would indicate which manufacturer that was. But it's of course lockdown time so in general postal service users up tremendously. And we ordered the new time by mail has a new item by mail and we wanted to trade in our old computer same branch. And we got one of these packages. The first thing. Uh huh, the manufacturer would like to have this back back either for remanufacturing or for complete recycling or whatever it might be. So if you do that you have a month to send it back we were moving at the same point in time we missed the timeline opportunity gone. Second thing we put it on a platform like eBay and sold it to someone else used and all was seven years old but nowadays computer last quite a bit with decent quality and how did we get it to the other person. Of course, using mail. This gives you and I mean you're really it's a very beginning of circular economy and actually we had some discussions here in preparation for for our discussion today. Electronics is probably at this point in time the easiest target specifically for the postal sector because you have a very high value product, which is fairly compact. Not send around motors of mining equipment by mail. But this utility which at the moment is great for mobile phones computers and so on games maybe. This will expand of course to more and more products of lower and lower value and all of these have to be collected one way or the other at the consumer of course the consumer will have to do something on this maybe at least. But they have to find a way from the consumer to someone else whether that is a trader whether that is another consumer whether that is a repair shop. And all these moves for a lot of these moves will come through the postal service and they increasingly will come outside the world of electronics to more and more products, I would assume everything which has a value of, let's say $100 or more and can be put in a parcel but there might be worthwhile shipping around because even, even with a certain amount of shipping cost the alternative is you lose whatever value is remaining in this product completely if you waste it becomes a liability actually. So if you send it somewhere else to get a new life or to get material out of or whatever you do, you have a remaining value which is sizable and as long as sending it around the world is substantially cheaper than the remaining value of the product. This will happen. And this is I think where the postal service comes back to you. Stefan, thank you very much for that and for the that unbranded example you shared at the end. Certainly it's the idea of reusing a recycling electronic devices consumer electronic devices a fantastic one. James, I'm going to throw straight to you so you can share a few more comments before we open up to a wider discussion so James do you want to make some brief comments as well on the circular economy and the role of logistics and delivery and so on please. I was you James. Thanks and look it's an honor and a pleasure to be here today. I'm going to also share my screen for a very important slide because I think it's fairly obligatory. So I'm going to start by asking here's a circular economy everyone. What does every single there's a lot if you Google circular economy you find lots of such things. What does every single circular economy slide has two things in common, every diagram I should say is two things in common. Can you guess what they are. Number one is they all have circles. Surprisingly enough for the circular economy well what is the second thing that all circular economy diagrams have. They all have arrows. Right, you don't have the circular economy without the circles and without the arrows. And the reason why I point that out is because the arrows. Everybody is logistics. The very hard of the circular economy I will put to you all today is actually is logistics. And the reason for that is and I can finish my obligatory circular economy slide now. The reason for that is because basically, I think one of the central tenets of the circular economy is that unless you move something is not valuable. It's only valuable often something is a waste or unusable in one place but the moment you move it is often when it becomes valuable and you can use it again some of Janet's different circles if you think about most of those circles, but often moving the location the item and a good example. You know some that I love is as Bureau and for example as a company that takes the ghost nets in the Philippines right these are large fishing nets. But again, can destroy habitat. But once you move them, you can actually turn them into skateboards and games and frisbees right they actually become valuable they become feedstock for another service. And so from the very center of the business, you know, I mean Janet talked about some of the business models I like to think about, you know, value creation because I'm, you know, ultimately an entrepreneur. But really what the circular economy does is it enables some really significant business models. Right. The first is that waste is opportunity. Right, you can take waste in one part of the system and you can actually turn it into opportunity again by moving it thread up some example here of a build of a business that basically creates brands to, you know, with through resale or donation mailer bags. And so we actually get put with every single clothing purchase right you're building the logistics you're building the movement into this into the actual service. Another one is that you know it's a global but Adams become very local. Right, reuse I mean I entire business symbol actually didn't start as a logistics company it started as a company. There was a giving network where people could give things they no longer needed to each other. What we found is that if you didn't actually include the logistics which is how simple became you know a small business parcel delivery company. Right, you actually couldn't create the value. And I think you know your final loop. You know, if you think about you know the other one is, you know circular economy models are very much about nature. You can take a feedstock for one and turn it into sorry take a waste from one process internally to feedstock for another there's three examples terror cycle. Again, doesn't work without logistics that taking really hard to process amounts of waste, moving them to the place where they need to be so what does it all mean for logistics and then I'll probably finish I think it means this there's three big lessons or be And probably many more, but I take away three things one, you know, even logistics networks were often built to the linear model. Right, they were normally often point to point models where you often even think about as career companies often start off as a warehouse to retailer. Right, lots of stuff to lots of stuff point to point, whereas what we found when we built out our network you know it needs to be multi point to multi point. We can actually deal with multiple inputs and leaving to multiple outputs multiple multi point to multi point networks. Super interesting. The second one is you start having to deal with things like me and my accuser one minimum order quantities of one logistics and this is very linked to multi point to multi point. But if you think about it, it's all about understanding how you can get density. And, you know, imagine if you could have as much stuff leaving houses as going into houses and step on just talked about doubling the efficiency, you can actually double the efficiency in some ways of your last slash first mile by having that you know by increasing the amount of density through circular models. And I think the third one is, you know, basically, none of this works for the environment, but basically without logistics actually also taking responsibility for its own emissions for its own waste. And, and I think that one of the things you start to think about is how do you reduce the harm of logistics, right in both upstream and downstream effects you know upstream is thinking about things like packaging. You know, I know we launched compressible impossible satchels through all of our customers we're the first in Australia do so in the US. Right, it was, you know, really important because you actually have to think about the impacts, but also downstream. Like what are the carbon emissions, this is why from day one we were always carbon neutral. And now we're looking at carbon intensity and converting parts of our network to do 100% renewable energy. And I think it's inherent on the the entire logistics and postal world to really start grappling with how does it get to net zero and how quickly can it get to net zero. So I hope that's useful in I'm really looking forward to the conversation. You've made a couple of really important points there to James that things like the packaging that we see. There's been a boom in the e-commerce which meant a boom in packaging, what happens to that packaging. We think it gets recycled, but what really happens to it. What happens to packaging that's been contaminated by five whatever reasons it makes us non recyclable anymore. We might come to that in a moment but there's a question that's coming from the audience and Janet I know you've already answered it by tapping out the answer on your keyboard. But I want I'd like to bring out a couple points there James just mentioned about the arrows in these diagrams that represent logistics and that when you move an item from one place to another, that can contribute to creating value. The questions that come in from Christine is what can post to help encourage the second loop that you described Janet. Can you just share a little bit about what what how how that I'll just get out in a second. Just share a bit of information about that for everybody please. Yeah, I think well James's point is really important I mean because you're going to people's houses you can also take stuff back with you that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise. And that little nudge or that little bit of latent capacity there is something that's probably still untapped that James can maybe mention more. But for me what the post is it's actually the lifeblood of the second hand market, especially as it moves online. And we've all seen those, well at least in my industry we have we're seeing those big numbers of the growth of the second hand market particularly online. So the re commerce market. And the reason that's so good for the circular economy is because if you go to a secondhand shop near you it's usually not a great retail experience because you don't have everything you don't have exactly what you need. So you're very limited with bricks and mortar to very local supply and demand. And so a lot of stuff just doesn't really follow that arrow. Whereas if you if you introduce efficient logistics and ideally clean logistics. Then you have a much larger interface between supply and demand and that means that the online second hand shopping experience becomes a much more satisfying user user experience for consumers and hopefully will pull consumers away from buying things new and towards buying things from the second hand online. Also just the economy of scale once once you know that things are changing the growth is there. The investments are being made this is the opportunity to also grab that opportunity and go with greener fleets, or use that latent value of the waste it's already in the fleets and low impact packaging. Yeah, just a few other things many more things to say on that. Yeah. You mentioned fashion there was called thread up, and there are various others the vintage I think is another one. And we've seen also some of the major e commerce fashion retailers like the land though, and one other doesn't immediately spring to mind have started offering the opportunity to to take clothes back. And we hear so often about clothing being the disposed of clothing and various aspects relating to the textiles industry being a problem and perhaps like a threat open to everybody now, looking at textiles and fashion, and that moving from the linear to the circular economy. What kind of role could the post play in enabling all of that, whether it's from a marketplace perspective or setting up a first mile slash last mile delivery network. James, I might throw to you first of all, and then step on after James is head is so I'm going to throw to you. Yeah, I think the, you know, I'll go back to the central concept that you know most of these things. You know, start with minimums of one. In fact our business actually began because it's really hard problem. You know this is often the opposite of where we do think of most of the things right we're talking about one thing at a time it has been seemingly cheap. Right, has been exceedingly easy. So it's often door to door, right, and as we built for an audience that doesn't really, you know, doesn't do that as their day job, it might say sending items, right, and it's, you know, it's and it has to be ubiquitous. So a lot of these things right like you think about that's a very difficult set of conditions and you know how do you build those networks that are actually going to make that happen. Again, posts, you know, like a lot of different models and indeed our entire business was built on this idea of minimums of one and for everyone. Right, let's democratize logistics let's open it up so that everyone can get access to, you know, things like by delivery from their door but actually now we're talking about reverse logistics as well. I think there's a massive important role to play around democratizing access to that service. And Stefan do you want to make some comments generally on things like the fashion sector or the textiles industry, and how the currently is a very linear process that there is a concern that I'm not clothes at the end of life just end up in landfill. What can be done better overall for that industry. And, and then again, how does logistics and the postal sector fit into that. Actually, you'll be surprised in in reality. You would be surprised in reality in the fashion sector there's a very sizable amount of pre consumer waste as well, which is material which is either lost during manufacturing. You know the cutouts you make a certain shape and you always lose like seven 8% of your material and it's gone, right, meaning you cannot use this material easily for a new product. Secondly, you have the items which are not being sold and not all brands lent to sales at a substantially lower value. So you have warehouses full of unsolved merchandise it's really amazing and fashion, we're working a lot in that and I was really astonished. Certainly you have of course the after use fashion after consumer. Now, there is of course and there always has been a certain amount of consumer to consumer trade. You know, the water shops often secondhand, but, but the real element here will be possibly and possibly not only in fashion that you need the items to go back in order to do something with the materials. People frequently want not to have any shirt or any trouser or any skirt or any dress. They want to have something which looks specifically and possibly specifically different from how it looks three years ago. So, simply reselling works only to a point I mean if you have a nice luxury label on it maybe yes but. What you need to do is you need to somehow disassemble it to some point in time to some level, and then reassemble it into new clothing, typically, and that is increasingly possible so there are a number of companies who are looking we are we are working with most of the larger brands, I would say, on the textile value chain. There are a number of companies who are looking into disassembling clothing. So, really in bits and pieces and reassembling it in a different fashion, that will of course mean if you have a piece of clothing which has a certain remaining value, you would have to get it to the manufacturer to a remanufacturing plan to someone who does something with it and that's where the logistics comes in. And, and it goes from closing which is meant for taking it apart into pieces and then reassembling. It goes down to threads meaning increasing the amount of recycled raw material in the threads of material to weave textile from to make clothing from all of these require industrial processes and I think in terms of percentage of the clothing used, you will see with an increasing circular economy, the amount of clothing going back to manufacturers one way or the other to be submitted to a very serious back to the roots and then remake new closing out of it, you will see that increasing dramatically simply because now it's low, it's not zero, because a number of large retail chains are offering, or a few are offering closing take back in their shops, but this is quantity wise not yet overly serious. The broader that goes the more there is the need again to collect that closing and of course what is easy for me in a large town like a city like Vienna with one and a half million to find the original branch up and give something back. It's getting more complicated. The more you live outside of these and the more exotic the brand is for your market. So you need logistics to give things back and increase back to you. Brian. Brian. Hello Brian posts have been handling returns in one form or another for for many years. The circular economy requires posts to enhance the value proposition of this unique capability. They've always had so Brian thank you for your comment. We're going to open up a poll now. So everybody get ready we're going to launch it. I can't remember where it's going to appear on your screen but we will have a poll and asking you for your input on maybe I can actually launch the poll can I know I can't. I wait for our IT people to launch the poll. While we're waiting for it to come up. Does anybody want to quickly comment on Brian's comments about how the posts have been offering the return service for a while and this is sort of the next step in enhancement of what's what's what's already been happening. James or Janet do you want to quickly comment on that while we're waiting for a poll to come up. I think you're spot on Brian. Yeah. There we go Brian spot on one of the things that's interesting about that process is sometimes people bring in their their goods as is and then it has to be packaged up and returned against brought in and maybe can be returned without packaging, which I think is an interesting thing that we're seeing in a couple of markets where parcels are being delivered so e-commerce purchases are being delivered without packaging. So they're just being sent in the box whatever it might be whether you bought a phone or whatever. And then the returns can also be done without packaging when I bought something off Amazon. There you go I bought something off Amazon I had to return it. No packaging required dropped it off at the at a pudo point actually, which we might get into a second the poll has come up. Transition to net zero carbon emissions when should posts transition to net zero carbon emissions so there's the choice there you've got four choices by 2030 by 2040 by 2050 or not sure. Vote please in the poll. I can't vote. But perhaps while we get everybody's voting as anybody want to comment on what they think should be the target for posts when it comes to reaching net zero carbon emissions. Janet you've unmuted yourself off you go. Is there anything wrong with today. Let's talk realistically they've got fleets of massive. Let's rule out today and tomorrow after tomorrow. What would a good. No, well, I think I think we've got the votes coming in and I'll leave it up to the it team to close the poll when we've got the votes coming in. It's interesting that that some posts have not made any commitments at all. We saw a Deutsche Post DHL make a commitment a few years ago, and everybody thought wow it's impressive it has made this commitment at a time when nobody else was making a commitment. More recently, I think it was post your post Nord. Sorry, so which post your post was going to correct me have committed to, you know, science based targets. Can somebody just enlighten us though, while we're talking about this. When we hear the phrase science based targets and things like that. How much of it is fluff, and how much is substance. What's a genuine target, and how do you measure it. Anybody want to comment on that. Don't rush me. No one. Hey, I do it if no one volunteers, go on then step on. And that actually speaks also to the question post to the audience. It's a distribution problem right. I mean you need to have a certain time to go to zero and the assumption that everyone can be the very last one to change. That's of course initial start right if everyone said, oh we have to consistently go down, you know, in the line and in 2050 or 40 or 30 we need to be finished, then everyone assumes that he will be or she or they will be the last ones to have this little itzy bit which deals with 2030 and so they can wait. And the science base might create that ramp that ramping down but of course there's a question who starts and finishes, and you post asks, when should posts transition, not any posts. So collectively, it's a different thing from individually individually I would fully side with Janet yesterday would be a great date to commit to something collectively that is probably utterly unrealistic. Because in reality if one would look at the postal system at all systems at a whole, one would have to come to a discussion, who moves where how fast in order to reach something. I think a fair target is probably an appropriate target would be 2030. I think if the postal system would be actually at zero given that essentially transport at its heart, which is not so easy to reach zero 2040 would be globally speaking or postal systems. Last one, switching off the lights so to say 2040 would be probably doable, even if not overly ambitious maybe and 2050 would be way too late. There we have it 2050 is way too late. That's, there's a headline straight away. Another question for everybody given that you've all in or have been involved in the UN UN system and have an understanding of standards and those sorts of things. How can a body like the up or you need or whoever it might be help all countries and all posts achieve these targets. What what can be done at a global level to assist people, no matter where they are in the world, whether you're in Europe or the South Pacific or wherever you are, achieve these sorts of targets. Share a comment on that. I'll throw out there and I think, I mean, let's let's let's get real I mean, I don't know I'm looking at US transportation again you can get the numbers all over the place. I believe that transportation is currently responsible for 29% of all global carbon of all carbon emissions in the US, a greenhouse gas emissions 29%. So it's almost like this is also when you look at the science based targets to what Stefan was talking about right that is really about trying to use the science to say, when do we have to make an end you know when we actually have to take action in order to make an impact. And what's the predo of those things that we need to do. So I don't know if it's about, you know, there will come a point we're seeing sentiment shift like mad. Right, it only takes, you know, hurricanes or bushfires or Texas freezing over or whatever might be sentiment is shifting like mad. And I think that, you know, again we've been 100% carbon neutral since 2014. Right, we've worked it into our margin. I cannot see why the Postal Service can't actually start by doing that, like all posts. I don't know why they're not right start actually taking responsibility for it and then working out how to reduce the intensity in the missions at the same time so I don't think it's a matter I mean, yes, 2050 is far too late I think 2030 is far too late. 2025 would be really nice. And to Jim's point the best time to start was yesterday. No problem about a tree isn't it. Now, I understand we've got the results ready from the poll so let's see what the audience says. There we go. 52% say by 2030 15% say by 2040. We have 20% saying by 2050 and 30% not sure. When should post transition to that set net zero carbon emissions. Since our discussion today is so much about the circular economy. What, how does the circular economy fit into the concept of net zero carbon emissions. I made that it's the sort of peas in a pod are they who would like to comment on that. I should have picked the name. Well, yeah, I'll give every question to James is going to send to James. Well, yeah, because he has gone net zero carbon. So we call it net zero carbon or carbon neutral. I don't know maybe you can share the steps about how you did it. Do you have a green fleet. Do you offset do you. You mentioned renewable energy you mentioned low impact packaging. Was there a particular part of it that was you what's the first step that no brainer and what's the hard bit. Yeah look I think that the first step is actually starting to get a measurement. Getting your arms around what measurement what you're actually doing. And of course we built it in from the very beginning and that's a lot easier to do than, of course, you know, having existing infrastructure that sometimes 200 years old I get that. But the first step is measurement. The second step is then starting to understand the strategies. So some of these strategies are interesting because they improve efficiency and reduce costs and this carbon emission right this is where you get the things lining up. If you look at your carbon abatement curves there'll be some things in the carbon abatement curve that save you money. Right and there'll be some things that cost you money. Right it's really interesting as you start to get that measurement right and a carbon abatement curve for everyone is where you basically look at you know the amount the cost per kilogram of carbon or a ton of carbon or whatever it might be. And you can start to plot that on a curve and some of this stuff will be negative cost. Right if we improve the utilization of this network we fill that truck an extra way or whatever might be you'll actually save money. And of course some of it we're going to transition and we start crossing over at this point where it's going to cost you money and sometimes that that carbon abatement curve is can actually again be net zero in terms of cost or whatever you can even draw a line. There's all these really interesting things that you can do and often there's market failures that are just preventing that carbon abatement curve because it's not economic rational so that's the second thing. Then after that, under the start to think about these strategies and some of them yes they're reducing costs, some of them are going to be conversion. You know so we worked with one of our suppliers, where they basically realizing and this is circular economy. You know, career companies own two things right that lots of trucks and lots of depots. And guess what the debt was sitting there with a waste resource of the solar energy on the roof. So why not use that resource to actually start charging the trucks right bang we're now getting rid of fuel surges charges bang we're insulating ourselves from, you know, the future cost of fuel and we're also earning our right to operate in a world where it's taking carbon seriously. And then with conversion then of course you've got the rest, and you know we can't move immediately, you know, you can take responsibility immediately and there is markets out there where you can then start to offset so. So again, I think there's this intensity piece reducing intensity of the network and then taking responsibility for the rest and that's the approach that we took to. Yeah, the post. Sorry, Jan. No, he answered perfectly go over to you. What I'm going to say was that posts don't exist in a vacuum. So posts will have the e commerce retailers for example, who are producing and injecting into the network. There will be the individual consumers who are. Who are also using the postal service. And the questions come in from us we ran so waste recycling can create an opportunity. However, there's a lack of such a market in the Pacific. How can post play a leading role in creating a market connecting recyclers. I think the broader question here is about the post in its role, maybe as connecting recyclers as was witness just said but also creating awareness among suppliers and on consumers. Janet since the Pacific as we mentioned maybe I ask you to lead off on this one please so how can post play a role in connecting recyclers or even creating awareness in their various markets. Oh, it's a tough one because I mean there's no better place to implement a circular economy strategy than in a Pacific Island right it's, it's expensive to bring stuff in there's not a lot of places to dump your waste so it's a circle, it's an island. So, you know, it is a lot of like this, there's a lot of rationale for circular economy in in Pacific Islands, however, the the postage is a is a huge cost. So you might be. I think it is a little bit of a barrier that for at least the product level or consumer facing circular economy strategies. When it comes to shipping, that is the strategy of a lot of small island states is that they do need to collect up their recycling and then ship it. However, it is now going to be very closely monitored you cannot just export your waste you have to transform it into something of value in order under the Basel Convention changes that are coming. You can't export waste that there are some loopholes coming for emerging economies they might have a longer lag time. So I think that there's still an opportunity I think that as long as waste is well sorted and perhaps they can be initial preprocessing to ensure that those waste streams or those recycling streams of high quality before they go on to ships, or other forms of transport that is still a viable it is still a potential strategy, but ideally we we design out the need for recycling, where possible, like, you know, using compostable products, so that you don't have to have that reverse logistics you know it is either compostable, or maybe even industrial compostable in the case of Pacific Islands and you don't need to send back those waste products of a low value inexpensive shipping lines, just so that they can re into the circular economy. Yes, what I'd say, not, not sure there's the best ideal solution out there. Stefan do you want to add something on this. Thank you very much in and thank you Janet. I think it's. We need to look a little bit more back into what circular economy is, and I very much want to look predominantly at what we currently consider end of life and then feeding it back into somehow feeding it back one way or the other into a new beginning of that part of it, but extension of life is very critical and that means that very critical as in, I think this is actually where a very large part of the easy gains is extension of life means repairs. So, you need to train people to do repairs that should be possible. And you need to have spare parts. How do you get spare parts. Of course you may have that right or you could at least mail them in particular because they will be single. Like specific parts. I think the postal system, my impression would be excellently suited for that in particular towards an island and you save with a spare part you save sending a new typically much larger equipment so it is in a way, which might come by different routes actually than the postal service. So it is, it is in a way there where I see an additional task for the postal service but not only on islands. In my perspective, a lot of people will move into make it into repairing products companies will move into making their products easier repairable. Consequently, the means to do that possibly some specialized tools definitely spare parts need to reach wherever they can be repaired and in case of an island ideally you do of course all of that on location and it's likely that in many many islands there is sufficient market for repair services even very specific repair services to create a living and a meaningful business. So you need to supply them that's all you need to do. And as I said postal service. Ideally suited for that. I have my doubts as does Janet do if an end of life. The products. There is an economic case for shipping back the products easily. There might be, there might be an economic case because waste is so expensive is such an expensive liability on islands that you have to figure out what to do with stuff, possibly. But I think before that what we do with you repair this instead of throwing it and then you reduce the waste problem and you increase actually the need for logistics back to you. Now I've got a question here from James Hale hello James, how are you with it's a really good one because it covers a few of the things that we've all just talked about here, or you've all just talked about value thresholds. So the value of the cell value to the seller of a second item needs to be greater than the cost of the postage. So what happens when the postal cost for the seller is too high. Whilst the environmental impact of devot disposing the item is also high. So where do we head from here and James has raised the question is their role for government subsidy. And there are plenty of people who immediately when you hear subsidy they go like this. But James I might start with you because you mentioned before about the benefits of moving to a green model and delivering how there's some things that you can do without costing my now the things cost your money. How do you mix all that together so the question is how can you ensure that the dollar cost or your cost or pay source or whatever it is that you've got. Doesn't outweigh the the actual cost of just buying a new one of whatever it is that you're upcycling or recycling or reselling or whatever it might be. I'll start with you James and then we might move on to one of the other panels for now some more thoughts. It's an excellent question because really a lot of this is, you know, is an economic argument and indeed, you know the first business that we started that then turned into sandal was literally a business that would find things that people had no residual value for like a bag of baby clothes. And we're basically, you know, for free, they'd give it to someone else and the receiver would just have to pay the cost of postage. Right that was the model that we're creating to and that the threshold was literally is the value is the value that the baby clothes worth more than the cost of the postage. You know we're playing with low residual values in that point so so it is very much there's a threshold there and of course there's also market failures all over the place. So we're not even homo economicus of like you know economically rational things there's all this stuff that can happen. I think the simple answer there is a big rule for regulation potentially that the rule for regulation is often around making sure that we see the true cost of the waste. This is called internal, you know, externalities. Right. And in many cases, if you think about what's the true cost of the carbon emissions that are in that we're going to meet otherwise. Right that's the things that can actually tip those scales in that direction. And if you can increase that then of course you're going to increase increase the amount of value you get from reuse or the different loops that Janet's talking about. And of course the flip side is what we can do what can we do to reduce the cost of logistics and that's where as I mentioned there's a whole lot of things we could be doing and, you know, again, we're built on trying to create more efficient logistics. Right and reverse logistics actually increases efficiency as well. So I think I think it is very good to be thinking about that that cost benefit. I think there's a strong role for role for regulation around internalizing externalities and buying the market failures because that is ultimately the role of government. You know, one of the roles of government is think about these market failures and how we can actually that that are causing negative externalities to society. Stefan or Janet, do you want to jump in on this point. Well, I just wanted to say, you know, it is a question should the post be cheap, just because it's better than throwing something away, or should we value the service of postage. So I don't have the answer to that question, but I did want to also flag that related to this. What happens when an item crosses a border and the cost of postage by the seller country is really low, and then the receiving country then has to sort of complete that trip at this very low, low cost. It sort of doesn't seem to reflect the true cost of postage. So I also wonder if that's sustainable or whether people are getting used to the fact that postage should be free or embedded into the price of the product. So I sort of don't, I don't know, and I actually see that there's some role key from for the UPU, you know, what is the cost determined by the selling the selling the postage service of the selling country, or when it crosses that border and that receiving country postage service has to complete the trip at a really low price. Is that really fair and what are the impacts of that. There are heads exploding across the coastal world right now, Janet. Before I jump in on this, do you want to have a quick comment please. Yeah, I was so much enjoying because I just literally imagine these heads exploding on the comments from Janet, knowing that this discussion is actually happening here where I'm living in other places. I think it's, it's one which is not related to circular economy is the, I'm, I'm taking things often literal so circular economy circular economy it's not circular subsidy. Right. The point is that you are creating a system where the economic benefits are helping you also to save the planet and with that, you're kind of save a little bit in enforcement and in subsidies and a lot of other things. And that is the idea behind circular economy or one of them, and which is of course particularly appealing to us we are a development agency. So we like that because enforcement is very different in different countries, but very basically speaking a lot of countries of the developing world have severe difficulties getting strong enforcement so how would they move on economic incentives, much better. I think James is. I would like to to side with James on this in saying that if the externalities the actual costs are properly reflected and the postage is too expensive to send something around, then possibly it shouldn't be set around. Possibly it's not the item that there will be items. There's no point in collecting every little screw from somewhere which has been used and send it back to the manufacturer. The effort to do this is actually outweighing the benefit. There is somewhere a stopping point. Ideally, the stopping point is determined by economics and that means that governments are, instead of asked to subsidize maybe the postal sector it would be very good to desubsidize particularly CO2 emissions which are in many, many countries still subsidized heavily. That means energy items and certain resource items which are heavily subsidized. In the moment you are, you're moving in the direction of reflecting the true costs and maybe not worth sending it back, then economically it might also not be worth environmentally because there is of course a point where you have to say this goes too far, sending that let's say from an island in the Pacific back to a manufacturer in Europe for an item which incorporates whatever 300 grams of CO2 is not worth it because getting it there might cost you 500. There is a cut-off point and it would be nice if through reducing existing subsidies mainly on the energy side but also on the resource side. We would get closer to the actual cost reflecting quite accurately also the environmental cost because then we have a system which balances which would balance out itself. Thank you. Thank you for that Stefan. I was going to go on and on about small items coming out of it going through the post-crossboard but we might then eat up the rest of our time with me ranting and raving about that. We've got some good questions that are coming in from the audience. I want to quickly cover one of them which was, oh gosh I've lost it now, don't just disappear off my screen. Talking about, here we go. How can developing countries, sort of crawling up on this topic of developing countries, how can they finance projects or get started I suppose in the circular economy. If you're in a developing country where it's not as simple as flicking a switch as we might have suggested earlier to go to the net carbon zero in your delivery network. Enough of my ranting and raving. How to developing countries finance projects in this field. Janet, do you want to start with that one please? Yeah, I was just trying to think of what projects. I mean, it might, Stefan might have more ideas because UNIDO is on the ground in so many countries. You know they have these national offices that are financing or cooperating with a lot of question countries. Stefan, do you want to take this one? Sure. After I elegantly pushed another one to you, I think it's only fair that I take this one. And it is actually as you rightly say Janet, relatively close to our heart because we are doing projects in UNIDO that's what we do a large part of our time. It depends what you want to do, meaning it depends on how much knowledge and money you need to do something in your developing country. Capital, things which are relatively cheap, relatively cheap is not cheap, but you know, a couple of million dollars to actually get done. There are a large amount of or a fair amount of donors who are specialized in knowledge transfer capacity building, piloting, whatnot, which a couple of UN agencies and other players, including us, provide access to if also in case of the UN typically by a government, in case of other entities also by others, but you know there is a perception of a problem. You talk to one of these entities, which includes us in UNIDO, and then you have projects which will undertake substantial investment. Let's say you want to put as James that on in a country like, well, I don't want to give any specific example in the country of medium size. You have the idea in the next five years I would like to put on all of my distribution center solar panel and change all my distribution vehicles to electrical. And this would cost you say I just grabbed a number 150 million. There are ways to create long packages, it would be long, but since circular economy is built on creating economic advantages, you would have to see possibly you can pay back that loan or otherwise you wouldn't do it. There are loan packages for these operators, they're not fixed, they would be assembled by a suitable development bank, for example, in order to see how this could move forward and the two can be combined. You're not quite sure you need the capacity to understand what you can do in which speed and so on, then you can talk to one of these development guys to help you with that there are many instruments from really relatively small studies over bigger and bigger. And if you're at it you might also look at what climate change does to you in terms of impact and whether you want to go to adaptation at the same time a bit, which is probably sensible. And then, once you have figured that out, together with maybe an implementer like us, UN or non UN it doesn't matter. Then you go possibly if a major investment is required you go to one of these international financial institutions. And there you are it takes a little bit of time but principally help is accessible for developing countries help is accessible back to you. I will leave you with Stefan's phone number at the end. I'm at UNIDO.org is fine. Thank you. So just climate at UNIDO.org. Now, James get ready I'm going to ask you one about one of your pet topics which is packaging. Christine has asked like to hear more from the speakers about reducing the carbon impact with packaging. We mentioned earlier on about the boom in especially cardboard packaging that there's been a shortage of cardboard in some markets around the world. And who knows what's really happens with that cardboard doesn't get recycled doesn't end up being flung into a furnace who knows what can we do. James. So I think the first thing is Janet told us what we can do which is look at the different boots that we have available right what can you actually reuse locally or you know what can you then, you know, repurpose, you know and so on until the worst version of like recycling. There is some certain things that I mean we I mentioned earlier we worked. You know, in the very early days, you know, to look at compostable satchels, compostable mailers. And you know that but that was actually very very exciting in the sense that they used to be home composted. And I think that's that's great because it's very local. Of course, what's interesting is you get to the next challenge of the labels. And you know it's not just the packaging it's also then the labels. So you know again these things keep going. What's also the other final little bit that's interesting though sometimes and this is I love it when technology and sustainability come together. Because we also know that some of those labels are actually better in terms of sorting machines so you get all these fascinating things. They're really beautiful so that's mailers you can think about, you know, you know, corrugated cardboard what can you do around that again, sometimes there's there's programs where the sender is going to take responsibility for that. In some ways, but basically again it comes down to this, you start by thinking about, okay, you know, get the data, what's the Pareto show because everything's a Pareto, particularly in the world of logistics. I find it's more and more Pareto and then you just start taking those problems one by one. And of course there's been a suggestion that posts and delivery companies could incorporate you talk about the first mile before change as part of their their milk run would be to collect. Use packaging from people's doorsteps and bring it back and make sure it does get recycled properly instead of being put into the wrong recycling bin and things like that. There's also the concept we're seeing a few of these examples around the world of recyclable packaging. So a multi use package that you then can either return to the sender or reuse yourself and it can be used up to 50 100 who knows how many times. Stefan did you want to make a comment on this. Just to point into the direction was a little bit more emphasis that you just mentioned the differences in packaging. I mean cardboard packaging can be reasonably well and profitable recycled locally I mean relatively locally and also it still costs some resource you need hot water essentially to do so to produce new cardboard boxes so there is a certain loss. But the more specialized your packaging becomes multi layer plastics whatever the more difficult it becomes with the recycling and then of course. Postal service can consider whether they offer the mailers standardized packages. Instead of multi to the problem always is when you have 50 different packages and you have to sort them apart and you don't have quantities of any and how do you recycle them. But if mailers and postal companies would actually take over the responsibility to standardize that packaging. Further, and then to possibly see to that after use it comes to the right goes into the right direction by potentially collecting it and then handing it over whether it's cardboard but also more complex packaging pouches, whatever. That would be probably a very interesting role to substantially reduce their environmental impact. Thank you and please everybody. So I'm going to keep your questions coming in and because Khalid you've asked me a very long question, give me a minute to read through it and try to digest it and we'll put some to to to the panel. One of the things we talked earlier on was briefly mentioned was the idea of the opportunities presented to the postal world via the circular economy. So I just want to make sure that we've we've covered off on this week. I think that sometimes environmental stuff, reducing emissions going electric solar panels reducing electricity use in your sorting centers, all those sorts of things can be seen as punitive. Does that make sense. You've seen this thing wow it's a cost or it's it's shuffled off to one side. And I'd like to let's talk about the opportunities that are here with regards to the circular economy and whether it's a business opportunity or things like that. And would anybody like to sort of share what what they think will be the opportunities some definite upsides for the postal sector in terms of adopting principles of the circular economy or becoming an enabler of the circular economy. You've all got your thinking faces on James. Yeah. Well, the one I'm watching I think it's quite interesting. I'm not sure if it's the most impactful but it's data. So we've got digital product passports coming in the EU and things go in and out of the EU so presumably that's going to be the future that all products will have a digital passport that contains information about its components, its origins, its materials, what should be done along the way information for end of life. All this sort of stuff. And so at passports are there for, you know, moving across borders or or it's different places. So I think for me to be interesting to see how the logistics sector engages with the digital product passport. Emergence. Is it going to be smart packaging, you know, are your stickers or your, your QR codes or however you communicate the information that you add to it. How will that link to the digital product passport, will the nature of your logistics the mode of transport the carbon footprint is that expected to be now added to the digital product passport so that people down the supply chain can account for the impact or lack thereof of the part of the logistics that you took on. And then they say, you know, data is is the new oil can't have a webinar without using that phrase. So, so it's also what are you going to do with all that data that passes through your hands I think it's also very interesting and growing area. That's, I've never heard dangerous in the oil before but I'm going to use it now. That's fantastic. I feel like I'm the last kid in class to find out that you know, Joanne Joanne is cool or something like that. But data is a huge discussion. Everybody's thinking Joanne Joanne who are they the the importance of data is hugely it's huge, not just domestically but talking about cross border and obviously there's whole teams at the UPU dedicated to data. And various other organizations are looking at this. Stefan, do you want to comment on the passport concept that that just mentioned so shed any more life or have any other comments on it. Ah, there are advantages. The trick is linking that and I think Janet has done an excellent job linking that to postal services. Very principally, I mean if you look at how you can create value in the postal service or for the postal service you, I would assume the three avenues are you're increasing your volume, you're increasing your prices or you're decreasing your costs. Right. So how can certainly economy help you with any of these. And part of that is, or you create entirely new products as suggested by Janet, which are kind of anyway, happening on the side. But might create value in itself like data. I would think that circular economy will also both of your clients, as well as of the postal entities themselves would also help you in actually getting better business cases. James in his business model has made clear that circular economy can help you getting up a competitive and future oriented business model in postal services. If I correctly understand what you're actually doing. Right. So, so there is evidently money in that there is a lot of money. I mean there will be an increase in traffic without any doubt. From point to point and I would say there will be an increase in cost for very carbon intensive services so if you find ways to reduce the carbon intensity of the offerings your, your profits will increase or your losses decrease dependent. So I think circular economy has a lot of, has a lot of things going for it there. On the data side, these passports will also be helpful to facilitate and that points it towards customers to facilitate. Then the overall operation of the circular economy you will know as a sender or you might know as a sender how many pieces of equipment are where in the world that might need repair remanufacturing refurbishing all of that information is not necessarily available to the manufacturer or potentially to refurbisher, but it is somewhere in the system. If the postal service would find a way to make information like that available and a product that might be actually quite interesting. And I must say I haven't thought through before Janet's comment, but the issue of data points to the issue of knowing where you can find value with your circular economy services in order to apply them and actually to generate income. The postal service, the postal service will have a lot of that data passing through and probably be the only entity where this data passes through. So it would be very interesting to consider whether one can make a business model of it. Thank you, Stefan. Now, we had a question come through from Ellen. Ellen, thank you for your question. We've talked about posts performing an enabling role in the circular economy. It's taken more active role by partnering with multiple product creators and managing the returns process directly using Stefan's fashion example could posts partner with multiple fashion houses and manage the sorting of returns on behalf of the partner businesses to make the process more efficient and cost effective for all. So almost act as an aggregator. So instead of every fashion house having their own return center, have one fashion return center run by the post or managed by the post with the posts, various pipelines coming into it. It's an interesting idea. Does anybody want to comment on that? How might work with this practical. Maybe I can start with that one. So that is a big business opportunity that is currently playing out. There are some third parties that do that. So especially with large brands that yet you didn't mention brands before. I don't know if it's taboo here. Can I name brands? Well, we have sandals. Name brands. I was just following Stefan's lead. Yeah. So you have there are white label companies that do that. So what they will do is you'll be able to send your product back to the brand. So Patagonia for instance or after X are using a company called Trove. And what they do is they take they saw they actually refurbish a bit so they can actually patch it up, clean it up, fix the zipper. And then it gets resold on the same company's website without anyone knowing that a third party did all this for the brand. So how the logistics part of that plays out. I'm not 100% sure, but I do think that that that there is a value in having a separate entity specializing in taking sorting refurbishing and bring it back. And then there's also some intelligent pricing that happens. And I think added us does it as well on what is the price of the second hand product and then that third party can also help figure it out. So that's sort of white label and then there's other companies doing it as a separate entity as well, you know, none come to mind. So it is a huge area. Do they partner with the post. I'm not 100% sure. So I might have to throw that one back to you Ian. I think they're about the that there are private private operators are already doing it. And this is one of the issues for posts is how free are they to do things other than delivering letters. We see some postal operators are quite restricted and what they can do. But is that restriction holding back other opportunities in their country without naming names, but it's something that really regulators and legislators about is can we empower the post to play a role in the circular economy be an aggregator of some sort of create efficiencies in our own economy will then unlock value for other private players. So it's a, it's an interesting question. James did you want to add something quickly because we're running out of time. I absolutely agree. I mean, I think it's a really interesting idea. But I think one of the things is does the post have to do it all or, as you say in, you know, can we unlock value and build an ecosystem around that as you know we work very closely with postal in one country and frankly, I'm really sorry when we'd love to work we haven't been able to work with postal in another. And it's like, you know, really interesting how to can you open that up. Because I think, you know, the circular economy is so big the price is so big. Right. And there's so many opportunities here for for postal but also for partnership. If we start becoming really innovative about how do we do that. The idea of partnership and how, how free the post is to partner with others in what means and what methods is also a question that individual countries have to answer. And I'm not sure that we, I really want to be too prescriptive right now because people know I've got certain viewpoints on certain things but you can look at various posts around the world that offer delivery services on behalf of other delivery companies. And you will see that there are companies that might do first mile on behalf of others, they might be posts that do third party logistics. Now for, for posters doing third party logistics immediately a partner with other they might be preparing at the warehouse that's being fed out into a non postal delivery network. So there are different ways to look at this and this idea of partying I've had a couple of questions have come in as well in the q amp a wish we're not going to have time to get into today we're talking about partnering at a global level. Who should the upu partner with to enable the circular economy or to assist in individual postal networks enable circular economy. I reckon that is probably a discussion for another time perhaps about how the upu and the various other global bodies can get together to enable the circular economy at a local level. And then making it smooth cross border because we no longer live in a world of discrete nations, some people would say, somebody, some will say that the nation state no longer exists that's obviously not the case but in terms of e commerce e commerce. I just didn't know a lot about borders, and now the borders are being put up and e commerce is struggling a little bit to understand it when we talk about things like the VAT on deliveries into the EU, and things like that. A discussion for another day because it's, we've got about a minute left. Really quick comments from each of you before we wrap up after some thank yous as well so I like your reversal so that's Stefan first quick final 30 seconds from you please. Thank you for the discussion. I think, for me what became clear is that there are plenty of opportunities for postal operators to participate in and benefit from circular economy, and very much looking forward to see how that is moving forward and if you can play a role in that very happy to give me a ring climate at circle economy is one of the bad you need oh it's one of the options circular economy at you need oh is another option. But no I mean seriously. I think it's also for you and body a very interesting task to distribute knowledge methodologies and to coordinate particularly in the trans boundary logistical sector in order that experiences move but also that systems. For data, you have compatibility questions right and it's not only the data but it's a super good example, you need compatibility and for compatibility you need someone who is working on it, and presumably organizations like you would be great. Thank you. Standards are indeed a whole part of that discussion James quick comment from you before we wrap up please. I think partnerships is really important. I think taking responsibility and taking action really early is super important. I think the final thing is yet don't forget the arrows that the very heart of the circular economy. Don't forget the arrows data is the new oil. Janet, a final comment from you before we wrap up. Data and logistics, including reverse logistics are really the fundamentals of the circular economy won't work without the logistics sector getting it right. So it's a really important discussion that I hope continues amongst your networks. Thanks for having me here. So just before we wrap up, I want to say a quick thank you to the whole team at the UPU catcher and co on the communication side of her put this together and promote it. And also thank the it and Olivia Bernier earlier the silver and the jewel bears and I'm really sorry that my pronunciation is terrible. But what can I say, the and well, look now I'm filling the screen everybody isn't that wonderful for you. So thank you all very much for taking parts today. Thank you for your attendance. I thank you for your contributions by Q&A with if you want to get in contact with any of our panelists. I don't know just email Stefan he shared his email address. He's waving his hands say no. Thank you all very much for your involvement today and it's such an important topic. If you want to continue the conversations in your own countries, please do and get in contact with the UPU if you need any support in moving this concept of the circular economy forward. I'm Ian Kerr. Thank you for joining us today and we look for remember to subscribe to the UPU voicemail podcast go to the UPU.int that's UPU.int for all the information about what the UPU does information about the UPU's voicemail podcast and other events like this that UPU will be holding in 2022. Have a great Christmas or whatever it is that you celebrate and a happy new year and we look forward to doing more of this for you in 2022. Bye everyone.