Hello everyone. Good afternoon. How are you guys doing? I hope you are not the session just before lunch. But I'll get started because I've been given a heads up to get started immediately. Interesting topic. I was once told that it's easier to love a brand when the brand loves you back. But how tough it is to love back. Especially in a world that's so connected, we all have a box in our pockets right now. That connects us to the world. There's a problem of plenty. There is a problem of, I wouldn't say problem but multiple challenges. Demographics is different. So I'll just open the session with this one question. How tough it is for the brand to love back to anyone? Actually, it depends on, it might not be easy. It might not be easy because consumers are spoiled for the choice in every category, there are hundreds and hundreds of brands which are buying for your attention. But like some of the panelists earlier said, if you focus on the consumers, consumers will love you back. And as simple as that, I can give you start with a very simple example. Because Thomas has been in the business for such a long time, we've been around for about 140 years. Traditionally and culturally, especially after we got listed, we've always been very performance focused. So most of our spends, largely whether a digital or even to a certain extent print advertising went into performance. So most of the time, the language was, for example, if I'm selling Singapore, so Singapore eight days would cost you say, 80,000 rupees, this is what you get. So it was always largely concentrated around the what of it. But I think what pandemic changed because consumers got wiser, people were actually now looking for better choices. And the category itself de-grew. So in the first year, immediately after the pandemic itself, it was the idea was to get people to go out and start holidaying on even think of holiday as a category, because they were actually struggling for basic choices of life. And that was one of the most difficult years. That's where we completely changed our approach. Instead of having a transactional conversation about X destination, you get XYZ as part of that at this price. And we actually drove most of it via social because obviously we were budgets or an issue. So a lot of it was the idea was to drive organically. From the conversation of, or transaction conversation, move the conversation for giving the same example of say Singapore. Now instead of saying that you get this as part of your Singapore holiday, we over the years we had created, curated a battery of lot of consumer images, videos, pictures of them holidaying in Singapore. So instead of saying you get this for Singapore, and say you buy Singapore at this and have fun in Singapore, we started showcasing consumer stories about what they can do in Singapore. So instead of showing what you get, we actually showed how you can have fun. These are the examples of how people are showing So if you go and check most of our timeline from trying to actively sell, we are now trying to actually say how people are actually having fun in those days. So most of the conversation, and we spend a lot of time, effort, and money to acquire this, whether we generate it via consumers, which is largely user generated content, or also when we use our own people on ground to create this for us. So I think that has made a big change in terms of how our engagement levels in social have gone up, our consumer ratings, our CXI ratings, all the scores have gone up significantly as compared to what happened with us. If you have time, I can give another example, very quickly, completely tangential category because we also have a very large here, India's largest forex brand as well. So and student is a very large community for us. So people who are going to study abroad, students who go to study abroad is a very large burgeoning segment and very high ticket value. They pay their university fees and you can imagine it can be anywhere between eight to 10 lakhs at the base minimum. And plus they carry our forex card and they, for their entire tenure of one or two years. So it's a very highly engaged audience with one, but the category if you see as forex is very transactional. Paisa lo paesa do. Aap indian currency do uske saathme main dollar, whatever your whichever country it is. So it is very transactional. What we did again this happened after post pandemic was looked at the entire life cycle of students right from the time they started researching. For example, if I'm going to Australia, I picked up that destination and looked at everything right from the entire time of they started researching which are the top universities in Australia, which are the best courses to go for. Then it would come to how to send your application. How are the best ways to write your essays or send an application? What is the visa application process, whatever. So you look at what you do when you land, how to get a job there, a part time job so that you can actually pay for your own education or daily expenses. So we looked at this entire thing, hired experts in the education consultants and built about hundreds of videos, explainer videos, how to videos on YouTube. And on a channel which was called a study buddy. Instead of saying that I want to sell to you, we said I want to become a buddy of yours in this process and this product or the channel itself was called study buddy which then eventually also now has been launched as a Forex card itself. So that actually changed the entire game for us. So now instead of trying for us to go and reach out to students for and advertising them to acquire, we started featuring when they started researching for their education itself. And that really changed the game. In fact, in the last one and a half, two years with the categories for us itself has grown by 100 and 150%. So essentially if you look at it from a consumer's point of view and not try to actively sell but try to add meaningful difference in their lives, I think it is relatively easier. But it's easy to say, it is easier said than done. It took us a pandemic for us also to figure it out because it's almost, well, it was like a struggle for survival itself. For anyone else? So I completely agree with what Avinash said. I would like to just add the life insurance perspective to this. So it's not the era where we can just talk about our product, what our product offers you. It's the era where you need to understand them, provide them knowledge, add the value, talk to their needs and at the end of the funnel or the stage comes where you put your product in front of them. So for example, buying a life insurance policy, the communication will not be this is my product, this offers you this, this is the premium you pay. It has to start from what life stays the customer is. How much will you need 10 years with growing inflation? How much will your family require in case something unfortunate happens? So it's also about educating them, knowing their pain points, what are their triggers, what are the barriers, what are their lifestyle like, talk to them, educate them, add value, what is life insurance, how much do you need, how much cover according to your life state, lifestyle, annual income. So that education, that value add is the complete process and that is at the end of the funnel, we talk about our product, that is when the brand love is built. If the brand is coming to me and just talking about selling the product, I'll not love that brand. But if the brand understands me, understands my pain points, talks to me, I am like, oh, I can resonate with this brand. They know what I need. So that is when how you build the brand love. Yeah, I think I absolutely agree with Harshita. We also come from like life insurance, we are a life insurance brand. And what we have realized is, you know, a lot of new audiences find this category very complicated. And today is the time we have been talking about, you know, creating thumb shopping content and the speed of that thumb swiping and sliding, the content is increasing year on year. So what's working really for us is, as Harshita mentioned, it's, you know, creating relatable and snackable content. But we have realized this short vertical videos are giving us a good result when those are shot on mobile phone in the real setting.  Is more authentic is actually giving us seven times more completion rates than our other video campaigns. And we are segmenting it very nicely between, you know, Gen Z's and millennials. So for Gen Z's, we try to keep very lighthearted, entertaining or educational as she mentioned. And for millennials our entire goal, like we did a longevity campaign recently, we try to add value in either informational or a motivational way.  So we are trying to tell, you know, connect with the audience through emotions when it comes to a more evolved audience. And for I think Gen Z, it's always entertainment and, you know, like a snackable, relatable stuff that's working for us. So if I understand you're saying that you're speaking to the consumers as the consumers, where the consumers are. But Devika, this is a question for you. I mean, brand love is very qualitative, right? And we all say that we are not here to sell. We want to build the brand, you know. But what is the key metric then to gauge its impact? How do you gauge the impact of brand love? I think that metric will vary for each business. But I do agree with the fact that it's very important for any business platform service to be able to identify their value proposition for a user, right? And that cannot simply be functional. So I'll respond to your question from our lens, which is glance as a platform when we see user love on a daily basis, right? Because depending on how much love we get, they spend time on the platform, right? So for glance as a platform, I think it's incredibly important to drive content discovery, which is what we stand for as a platform for our users. So enabling discovery of content in a construct that is seamless that allows for serendipitous discovery of content, right? Because there are set sort of content patterns that each user has, right? And you would like gaming content or shopping content or lifestyle, travel, so on, so forth. But how is it that you are able to understand your user better and actually surface content that they may not be actively looking for? And I think developing that understanding of a user will automatically reflect in brand love, right? Because if you are able to add value to their life, create relevance, then that is where you see love. And for us as a platform that directly translates in very key metrics like time spent, session time, engagement rates that we see, and that is what we aim to sort of keep strengthening and deepening. So if I take that ahead, Sarvesh, what would you say? How do I reconcile between having quick results? Because clearly we have to kind of keep the business going. So there are quick results that are needed. But at the same time builds the brand love, which is a long-term strategy. I don't think I can love a brand or love even a person overnight. That's very rare and doesn't last either. So keeping that in mind, how do you kind of reconcile and keep a balance between the two? So for us, we entered the digital space quite later than some of the industry peers. And we had some learnings when we were getting started. So we developed an internal model called AAA Plus, which is purely focusing on awareness, accessibility for the customers, consumers, and then driving the acquisitions through it, adding value to all these three areas simultaneously. For some quick results, after doing some initial performance marketing campaigns for driving business goals or brand goals, what we realized was like, being omnichannel was not working out for us as a brand. And that's where we created platform-based strategies. And one of our approach was we backed by two of the largest PSU banks. So we had our core customer database is very strong. So we curated personalized WhatsApp campaigns for our quick business goals. And that really showed some good results while our performance campaigns or Google performance max or affiliates was building the lead pool. The early acquisitions and conversions came from that personalized WhatsApp campaigns which we were doing. And then in terms of long-term brand loyalty, you could say, or keeping your brand connected to the audience, we realized very early that data and analytics is going to be very important to understand your consumer, to have meaningful conversations. And that's when we started developing our intellectual property, which is the UMatter app.  And it could be an everyday app for people. It has interesting things in the app right from, having your health vitals. You can have your smartwatches connected to the app. You have curated yoga. You have live wellness sessions. Similarly, then there are many resourceful blogs, article, meditation audios, free mental health assessment. Then further going into having financial literacy modules, because for the end user financial as a subject gets slightly complicated. So when you're selling life insurance or any financial products, there's only so much you can speak with your consumer. But we are trying to add value by creating this property. In fact, we did a soft launch which went successful internally for our customers and our partners and employees. Two months back, we were launching the app this month. So we are aiming that this app is going to be our way to connect with the audience in the long run. I mean, Ash, would you want to add to that? How do you keep a balance between getting quick results, which is relevant and important for business, but at the same time, go forward with the long-term strategy of brand building? See, I think with the proliferation of media, there is so much of choice available. Every market year is spoiled for choice. And this is across both traditional media as well as digital media. To my mind, I think both these can run parallel. It need not be either or. At any given point of time, for example, for us also, there might be at least 30, 40 different kinds of tactical campaigns where you are constantly focusing on trying to acquire customers and feed into your e-commerce channel or feed our retail stores from a query point of view. So that we qualify as performance. But at any given point of time, there are also campaigns where we run for existing campaigns. Or like I said, the curation of content which is not necessarily trying to sell, but trying to engage in. And for us, we want to stand or intend to stand for building memories, lifetime memories for brands. And can I, via all our messaging on a one-on-one, large format campaigns, or we use a lot of connected TV also these days, can we continue to pass on that message? And these can actually happen simultaneously. It need not be one over the other is what I think my personal. Has one overpowered the other ever? Not necessarily. I think increasingly. It would have been maybe five or 10 years ago. But today, you can actually run all these campaigns, parallely micro campaigns. It's not never, earlier it was like you do two or three campaigns a year. Right now you can actually have, every month you can have a large high impact campaign, run it on digital or connected TV. At the same time, through large programmatic advertising, search advertising, you can even have hundreds of other smaller tactical campaigns running at the same time. So to our mind, I think this is the best time to do that, where you can actually run purpose-driven campaigns at the same time, at not very high scale, at within maybe medium budgets, unlike the past, but at the same time also run tactical campaigns on an ongoing basis. Fair. Devika, you spoke about engagement and experiences that are important for brand love. One of my favorite recent examples is Barbie, which was launched like in 1959. It's still relevant because it's not only evolved, but it has used the emerging technologies, perhaps in the best way possible, to engage with the consumers and the audience. How do you think we, or as brands, one should use these emerging technologies, one to stay relevant, second to engage, and create experience that's worthwhile? Sure. I think the first thing is to understand what is the user's engagement with a particular technology, platform, or app, as the case may be, right? And if for any brand to be successful, it's important to understand that value equation and leverage communication and experiences that are built on that organic equation, right? So again, for instance, so on Glance, there are, you know, given that, sorry, this is a bit of a segue, but Glance is not an app, right? Glance is a platform that is published in conjunction with OEM partners. And so therefore, simple things like user flows or user actions to read an article or to, I don't know, download an app, play a game, et cetera, are uniquely constructed keeping the platform in mind, right? So, one, it's important to sort of leverage that organic user behavior to see how best, you know, you can plug into the user's existing behavior and thereby establish your value as a brand in that construct. The second thing, of course, is what is the relevance of your communication to that particular user, right? So it is, so if you are theoretically looking at gamers at a younger audience at Gen Z, and if gaming is a key sort of interest area for them, then how is it that you are able to fit into that space organically and create messaging and content that would, you know, establish your value proposition without saying, hey, I like gaming too, you know? Which is very in your face. So I think leveraging that organic behavior, ensuring that there is relevance of messaging to the user and then trying to see how you can go over and above your performance-led advertising or, you know, ad-led behavior and see how you can leverage content to create that bond with consumers. I think that's really, really important. And I think that's what Barbie did beautifully, right? Oh, it did amazingly well. Contextual. It's amazing that how all age groups love Barbie even now. I mean, that's brand love in true sense. Harshad, do you want to add something? So regarding the emerging channels, it's all about to start with, say, the user journey mapping. Might be some business, the turnaround time is shorter versus some financial product where the turnaround time for the, is for few months. So starting from how will the user interact with that channel, at what stage will he or she come to that channel? Like for example, someone coming to my website surely has a higher intent than someone scrolling through my social media. So we need to understand at what stage which channel is user interacting with. And accordingly, the message, the communication, everything. For there are many emerging channels, but is that utilized just for information or that is to deep drive what are the pros and cons of this product, for example? Whether the audience is in market and thoroughly into researching about my product or is it just, I'll say, Zensi who after, say, three to four years will look for an insurance. So it completely depends and needs to be mapped thoroughly so that we are very relevant with our communication to the audience. Let me ask you a radical question. Leaving the brand that you own currently, tell me a particular brand that you love the most and that has evolved or changed over time and any particular reason why you love it? Pick any brand that comes to your mind, which is that one brand that you really think has built the brand, is loved by the consumers and thus loved by you and why? Coca-Cola. Sorry, I don't think- Coca-Cola. I think they've done a brilliant job. They've taken their core proposition of happiness and they've been able to build on that for decades. And I think that is truly commendable and take the core construct of happiness and build such relevant stories globally for consumers that I feel I find very, very powerful as an advertiser and as a human being. Nice. Yeah, I think there are two brands which I keep closely following. One is Zomato and another is Suggy. And these both brands keep, while that was a good point on, having a long-lasting brand positioning, these brands I'm seeing that they're creating relatable content and they're like these small snippets which are like quickly engaging and it's not just out there on their social media platforms but you have the app, you get these notifications. Those are also equally engaging and I feel they are doing a pretty decent job. Yeah, I actually agree. I would have said Zomato as well because I think they do some amazing job in terms of content creation and not trying to actively sell and just engaging users with topical content. But maybe apart from that, what I would also add may be relatively boring, slightly un-traditional brand but Amul I think has done a great job over the years how they've tried to stay relevant in spite of such a huge pedigree and creating the topical content. I mean, I know we've all looked for those Amul hoardings everywhere, small little ad in newspapers they're not trying to sell, they're just looking at topical content and creating and giving it a little bit of twist. So I think Amul has also done a fabulous job in terms of how they are engaging user and creating topical content. To my mind, I think that's also relevant. Harshata? So I'll just like to quote an example. So that's again Zomato, we get a better context. So like for example, there was a discount offered by Zomato and Swiggy and the communications said, leverage before our CFO finds out. So that is the sort of content that really uses engagement. When it says sort of match or something, the push-up notifications, like you want to watch match and not cook, order now sort of. So the way they have leveraged the micro moments and also the contextual and it's not the same notification or same communication across India. If it's raining in Mumbai, their communication is for that Mumbai rains. So I mean, they have done a fab job and they are till date relevant at every point of communication and touch point. My last question, I can time's up. I can see that. But one last, what is that one learning you want to give to the audience out here when they're looking to build brand love for their consumers? Just one. I think everyone spoke about the fact that identifying your value to the user is really important. But I think it's very, very important for brands to think about how are they driving discovery for their respective brands? So there was Rohit Shankar on stage earlier from Bain and he raised a very interesting point where mind space is equal to, well, that's what drives. So I think that's a very important consideration. While it's very, it's critical to identify who you are as a brand and what your value proposition is, but it's also equally important to be, to stay relevant and contextual and drive discovery of that value for your consumers. Anyone? I think, yeah, good, good. Yeah, so I think accessibility for the consumer or customer is one of the important thing with the emerging platforms coming up. So I feel it's not just about communication, but when the customer comes on your ecosystem, you need to have shorter journeys, shorter timeframes and very easily understandable products out there so that the entire accessibility part of it is convenient for the end user. I think for me, and this is more of our own learning than this and I know there is no right or wrong answer for this, I mean, there can be 100 ways of actually building up for your brand. One big revelation for us at the risk of maybe repeating is we don't try to actively sell anymore. The idea is I don't, because there is so much of choice for consumers, people will see through it when you, it's more of an active sales message versus what you're trying to do and trying to be relevant or more adding value to their life. So instead of trying to actively sell, is there something that you can, the message can enhance the value of consumers? Like can I add value to that? That's our biggest learning in the last at least post pandemic. I think one thing will be focus on the research, your existing audience.  How are they seeing your brand? It might be you were targeting an affluent customer, but then you discover that your data tells you that a non-affluent is equal market, equal customer base of your customers. So that is really important. I mean that research part, the homework, the background on fields not, I mean, there's a saying that brands are not built in the office, they are on the fields. Well, how you, people perceive your brand. So I think that research and homework, that groundwork is very, very important before you go and map out a strategy to build a brand. Thank you. With that, I think the panel comes to an end. I would end by saying what I said at the start. It's easier to love a brand when the brand loves you back. And as I understand, there are multiple ways where a brand can love back its consumers. To that note, thank you very much for the conversation. Thank you very much for listening.


Good morning guys. We just got out of the tent and there's like a whole herd of Vaikuna right in front of us. So cute. I think they're quite interested in us as well because they're always putting their heads up and then looking at us. Every time we make a noise they're like, oh, what are they doing? And then you've got a herd of alpaca as well in the field just over here that those I think are farmed, whereas those I think are wild. Beautiful. I'm Lavi. And I'm Oli. And this is our hero, Bumblebee. Together we are attempting a Guinness World Record to become the youngest pair to circumnavigate the globe by motorcycle. Join us for season three here in South America. Good morning world. Welcome back to the channel. Stay number 303 on our circumnavigation around the globe by motorcycle. We're here in the Hohoi province in the far north of Argentina and we camped here last night just a couple of kilometers from this massive lagoon over that way called Laguna Pozueles where hopefully we can see a whole lot of flamingos. Yesterday's a really exciting day because we will also cross into Bolivia. Woo! Yeah, let me show you guys the route for today. So we are here and this morning we're going to be starting by riding over to Lagua Pozueles or Pozueles Lagoon before returning back on the 30 mile dirt road to the route 9 which will take us up to the border of Bolivia at Villazon and if everything goes well there we'll continue up into Bolivia to the town of Tupiza. Yes, we have a long way to go and it's already 8.30 so better hit the road. Let's go. Always a nice sound in the morning, hey? Yeah, and look, the vicunas are still hanging around next to us. Good morning, guys. We wish you an awesome day. So we camped last night just about a kilometer away from the ranger station which is at the entrance to this lagoon reserve so that we could get back here nice and early to see the flamingos. Yes! Oh yeah, remember there was some sand where we came in. Uh-oh. It's alright. Alright? Yeah. Okay. Just about.  Cool, what a scene. We don't really know where to go. I think we'll leave them to it, hey? Yeah. Bienvenidos, monumento natural laguna de los pozuelos. But we cook my love. Thank you. Now, I'm not sure if we have to check in or something before we go. I think we probably do. Registration. Okay. Perfecto. Dos personas. Dos personas. Luego, aquí, check out. Cruz al puente. Yep. 100 metros. Yes. Mano derecha. Okay. Ahí es la entrada. It's free. You can. Todo lo que quieras. Perfect, perfect. And we can take a flamingo home? No. Yeah. In English. Oh, yes. Thank you. English information, that's awesome. If you see stone, you must return. Okay, yes. Do you think it's stone today? Yes. Or four o'clock? Four o'clock. Okay, hopefully we will be in Bolivia by then. Dos caminos. Voy a mostrando en el cartel. We are here. Okay. 50 kilómetros. Habra panca. Yes. Y luego, Ruta. Nice. Yes. Laquiaca. Laquiaca. Oh, aquí. Uh-huh. Cinco kilómetros. Uh-huh. Cien eguillas. Uh-huh. Ruta, cuarenta. Uh-huh. Laquiaca. Ah, okay. Aquí, quebrada de toquero. Oh, okay. Muy bonito. Oh, okay. Okay, gracias. Gracias. Which is gracias? Okay, retorno aquí, después. Okay, okay. So now we have a bit of a decision to make after the lagoon because we didn't even know there was a second way to get to the Bolivian border. But the ranger there, she said that it's a really beautiful canyon area. The way is as well shorter, so we will end up actually next to the border. In 65 kilómetros. Exactly. As opposed to 120 kilómetros. Exactly. If you go the other way, but 70 kilómetros of that are paved roads. Yes. Yes, it's always 50-50. And it was raining in the night. So, yeah. But if you take this road as an example. Yeah. It was raining and you can't really see, you know. It's true. There's no puddles. There's no mud. It looks absolutely fine. Yeah, I think our decision is made. Uh-oh. You think we're gonna take the longer dirt road? Yeah, I think so. Got a whole herd of alpaca over there. The sheep of Argentina. Look, you've got a whole bunch of sheep on this side. And a whole bunch of alpaca on this side. That looks so cute. Yeah, though, look at this. And they've all got like red tassels on their ears. Oh, there's some very little, little, little ones as well. Oh my God, how pretty and cute they are. They are so beautiful. So cute. Okay, so this gate, it looks like we do need to actually open. Okay. Even the sheep have red tassels on their ears. All right. Whoa, that dog was coming close to us. Hey, maybe he was just coming to say hello, but you never know with sheep herding dogs.  So let's not go over and say hi. Let's not. Bye-bye, Bumblebee. Bye, Bumblebee. We see you on a bird. Don't talk to strangers. So that's as far as we can go with Bumblebee. So now we've got about one kilometer to head over to the lake to see the flamingos. There's so many flamingo here. Wow, look at this. I think we were a little bit too excited at the start and a whole load of them just flew away. They were like, no, I'm out guys. Look at the ground. It's covered in all of this like slimy algae, which I think is what the flamingos are feeding on. Wow, this lake is just full of birds and you can hear the birds sounds everywhere. It's so incredible. I think this is probably about as far as we can go actually. After this it just gets muddier and muddier. And we forgot our swimming costumes. Incredible though, incredible. You can see the lagoon stretches like way off into the distance and there's just flamingos and other birds just absolutely everywhere here. This is like David Attenborough stuff right here. This is like pure documentary style. So this lagoon, the Pozzuella Lagoon, actually fluctuates massively between the wet and dry seasons. In the dry season it's around 100 hectares at the least, but during the wet season it grows to 15,000 hectares. And this place is home to 100,000 flamingos, which is absolutely crazy. I can't even imagine that many flamingos, but they're here, they're in this lagoon. So this area is known as the Puna and it's actually a UNESCO biosphere reserve. And in 1981 it was declared a natural monument. So it's an incredibly important place for bird species. There's not just flamingos here. You've got plovers, you've got lapwings. I don't know any other species, but they've got a lot of birds here. Look at all the footprints. There's just thousands of thousands of thousands of flamingo footprints everywhere in the mud. So sweet. I don't think that we are very professional birdwatchers because every time when we get too close they're just flying off and we don't have pinoculars to observe them from a distance. So, at least I got a really cool shot of them all flying off. That's about the best we can get. But anyway, we don't want to disturb them too much. So we will head back to Bumblebee and see how she's doing. Goodbye 100,000 flamingos. Goodbye, guys. We wish you the best life. I don't know what's going on here, but apparently there's a rule underneath the animals that this one here is the toilet. No way, guys. We just saw the Vaikunas standing on the poo pile, making poo. They know the rules. What is he doing now?  Look, look, look. There you go. That's so funny. That's really, really funny. Pooping on the poo pile. Not the next one going. No way. Yeah. Well, there we go. Now you know, hey? The Vaikunas, they take it in turns and they all poop on a poo island. This year's right where we left Flamingo watching over. It's time for breakfast. So for breakfast, we made like a mix of granola, vanilla granola with like chocolate flakes to make it like extra tasty. It's a nice mix. What are you guys doing? Oh my Lord. Don't worry, we're going this way. Hi. Gracias, much as gracias. What an awesome place to visit in the morning. Wow. Yeah, a nature spectacle. Yeah, that was amazing. Crazy, we were the only ones there for the whole time so we could enjoy the lagoon all to ourselves. Yeah, it was really, really cool to see all these flamingos and all these other birds doing whatever they do. It's just so nice to see wildlife. And I read on the board actually that there's three species of flamingos that live in the lagoon and one of the species, the Andean flamingo, this lagoon has 47% of the global population and apparently there's more than 60 species of birds that call that place home so you can really see why it's a biosphere reserve, recognized by UNESCO. Yeah, wildlife documentary style. Yes. So now we have our 50 miles of dirt road to take on before we get to the border to Bolivia at a town called Villazon. So far, the road looks actually all right. I mean, it's a lot of corrugation which is always a little bit annoying. Like, ugh. Yeah. But okay, let's see how it will develop because apparently a little bit later on there's a storm coming as well. Just like the last three days in a row we always, always seem to be fighting against time because a storm is coming. Yeah, not the winter, the storm is coming. Where is this person walking to? I don't know. Hola. Hola. Look at this Herdo house right in the middle of nowhere. Wow.  Incredible. And you can see this one is actually traditionally built as well with like mud bricks and a store roof. Oh, some more Vaikunas next to the road and they love it here. Yeah, there must have so many here, so many. Oh, got a little bit of a puddle. No, I think it's okay. Let me just see where I'm gonna go. It looks all pretty.  It's okay. Yeah? Yep. Okay. Aha. So look here. Oh my God. Okay. I'm stuck. Okay, if you give me a push, ready? Three, two, one, go. Oh, nearly there. Three, two, one, go. Wait, three, two, one, go. Yes. Yeah, it looks like the rains have created these like little rivers across the road. Mud puddles. I hope there are not too many of them coming. Ooh, okay. Wow, yeah, it looks like a overflow here actually on the right. Yeah, there's been a lot of rain recently, so there's definitely a lot of water around. Oh, look, it's a school here. Oh, wow. A school for humans or for llamas? A llama school. Because I can barely see any people but I can see a whole lot of llamas. Oh, that's cool. I really wonder how many kids are at that school though. Yeah, me too. I really wonder. Yeah, it's a bit drier here. Nice. Speed is on. We said that we either wanted to find a room into Pisa, which had either a free breakfast or a pool. Yes. Because I don't think we can afford both at the same time, but we might just be able to afford one or the other. So we'll see. We're just coming into a small town here called Ciengías or llamas. Llamas. Or Ciengías in Argentinian, Spanish. Apparently they have free Wi-Fi here. I read on iOverlander. That's super weird. So we will check out some spots here and see if we can get some internet. Yeah, because we've got to try to look ahead and see what rooms are available into Pisa. Yes. With a pool or breakfast. Or both. Oh, nice. Look, got some traditional mud brick buildings. Yeah, it looks like a really quaint place. There's a little barrier here. Okay. Can't go here? Can't go here apparently.


Well, welcome everybody to today's webinar. It's great to see so many people signing up for our first webinar of 2023. I hope you all had a good break over Christmas. Today's webinar is all about improving operational efficiencies and reducing environmental impacts at Zoo's Victoria. We're the real focus on water, carbon, waste and energy. So we're hoping to do more of this sort of theme this year where we're actually providing examples where there's been a true concerted effort to achieve that. And I think Zoo's Victoria is one of those examples. So our presenter today is Kiam Yong, who's Senior Manager of Environmental Sustainability at Zoo's Victoria and myself, Richard Campbell, the Managing Director at HydroTerror. All right, and there we are. A little bit about Kiam. So Kiam's first professional work took him to Southeast Asia as a civil engineer where he witnessed widespread devastation of the natural environment. His passion for the environment led him to pursue a master's degree in cleaner production. After some years working as a consultant, he joined Sustainability Victoria in 2005 in the business team and in 2008 he joined Zoo's Victoria as their Senior Manager for Environmental Sustainability. His key role involves reducing Zoo's Victoria's environmental footprint by developing an environmental sustainability strategy and supporting programs such as carbon neutrality, environmental management systems, resource efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable procurement. In 2013, Kiam was instrumental in getting carbon neutral certification for Zoo's Victoria, making this a world first for a Zoo organization. So I think you can tell from that description that we're very lucky to have an expert here in terms of dealing with a whole range of challenges that businesses face and becoming more sustainable. Before we charge into Kiam's presentation, just a few things. We love your questions and the way you can raise a question on these webinars is to use the Q&A button at the top of your screen and just put your question in there. I will read those questions out at the end of the presentation. Why does Hydrotera undertake these webinars? Well, we really do believe that we need to share knowledge and we're lucky to work in with companies such as Zoo's Victoria who have some real wisdom to share. We also like to get involved in facilitating education and you'll see in some of Kiam's slides that the Zoo also is proactive in this area in terms of training. And we like to have an industry leadership position in terms of trying to get people adopting practices that are going to improve operational efficiencies. About today's webinar, topic one is from Kiam and it's about improving operational efficiencies and reducing environmental impacts at Zoo's Victoria. Topic two is just a case study from myself that we did with Zoo's Victoria that focused on water monitoring and management component of that. And the final component, part three, is the Q&A section. So without further ado, I would like to pass over to Kiam. Many thanks, Kiam, for joining us today and let's take it from here. Fantastic. Thank you, Richard, for the fantastic introduction. So, yeah, so... Next slide, please, yeah. So today, I'm just going to talk about a bit about our stance on climate change, a bit about carbon neutrality, about our environmental management as well. I mean, everything here that I'm going to talk about is actually part parcel of the EMS. So the environmental management system steers everything. So when I'm talking about things, program policies and things like that, it comes from the environmental management system. So that's the thing that underpins everything. I won't go into detail about the EMS, but the programs, as you see, comes from stems from there. I'll talk about carbon neutral, a bit about net zero, the difference between the two, resource monitoring, how we actually measure our resource because everything we do is actually backed by evidence. We have a very evidence-based organization, so everything needs to be backed up. Our renewable energy program, our waste program as well, water efficiency. I'll talk about carbon offsets as well for those who are interested because I think this is really important. Controversial at this stage, some people are opposed to carbon offsets, we are not. So I'll talk about it a little bit and a bit about staff training and awareness because that's like the engine of the works. I mean, without that, we also fall apart quite easily. And also some priority projects and next steps for Zoos Victoria. Next slide, please. So for those who don't know, Zoos Victoria is a state government entity. We are a world-leading zoo-based conservation organization dedicated to fighting extinction. So our main purpose is actually fighting extinction. Our front is actually the zoo. Back of house, we have a lot of conservation work. And we exist for that kind of thing. Our primary purpose is actually that. So we are front-facing. We've got four zoos now. Hillsville is an Australian zoo. Melbourne Zoo is a traditional city zoo. The oldest zoo in Australia and Werribee Open Dane Zoo is like an African type zoo. And Kaibram is a new acquisition for us in Kaibram. So somewhere in between near Ichuka, I think it is. So it's a country zoo as such. Next slide, please. So this is our climate change position statement. And I wouldn't read everything, but it talks about wildlife, the effects of wildlife on climate change, habitat. People as well talk a little bit about SDGs, important SDGs, emissions and energy, which is all about our focus on today. And really for us as a zoo, if we do not take care of the environment, you will see for us as a conservation organisation, you will see the impacts of climate change on animals that we care for. So as an organisation, we should be caring for the environment ourselves and making sure that our emissions are at as lowest possible in the way we operate. So it's really important for us. Next slide, please. And also this is actually a very good slide that I always like to tell this. The short story about a few things. If you look at that picture, there's a few animals that are actually in our care currently. Some are affected by extreme weather conditions like the fire, floods and things like that, that come to our care. There are a few kinds of climate change and other factors as well. Some of them are long-term climate change events that affect their habitat. Things like the mountain picnic possum they used to live up in the alpine regions of Victoria. And as you can imagine with global warming and warming of our own landscape here, you see more or infrequent events of let's say snowfall and things like that which means that their habitat is going to change. And also their food source is going to change as well because of the climate change as well. So when they wake up and they're looking for this boken moth to eat, they may not be there at the time where they wake up because they're only hibernating muscle in Australia. And things like that. So we have those animals in our care and they are there. Not because we want to assure the public is because the species numbers have declined significantly and they are a threatened species in Victoria. Next slide please. This is actually our policy. Extract from our policy. So for our EMS and for our management system, we started off by implementing a policy in Victoria long time ago. In 2009 or something like that we already developed a policy already. So I think the policy is really important. If you haven't got one already set up something, a policy actually steers quite a bit. And it gives top level management a commitment to actually do something. So we've got a board for the board to approve the policy and from that policy we developed programs all the way down. It's changed significantly that policy. So basically I've highlighted a few of those keywords things that cover neutrality is there to stay. Going towards zero emissions is another one. So while we're carbon neutral, we're still heading towards zero. Preventing pollution is a big one for us as well. Managing our resources more efficiently. That's a resource efficiency part of the program. Reducing ways to landfill or talk about that quite a bit here in this presentation. ESG is something that the word is new. But sustainable procurement has always been around since day one. But we've now got a very formal process now at ESG procurement. And of course alignment with the UN SDGs. Next slide please. So about carbon neutral right? So this is actually taken off from the Climate Active Certification Program which we certified since 2013. The first, like I said, the first zoo in the world to be certified. So basically under the Climate Active certification you've got emissions, you reduce as much as you can. Whatever that's remaining, you buy offsets and you claim carbon neutrality. So regardless of what state you're at even if you start reducing as a start or at the end like this kind of stuff or in that progress anywhere in between you can claim carbon neutrality by buying offsets kind of thing. Alright, next slide please. And then net zero emissions came about quite recently it's just the past few years and basically the emphasis for net zero emissions pathway is actually about reduction not so much about offsets anymore. So basically it's about like reducing as much as possible even setting targets like halving by 2030 at 2050 achieve zero and if you can those last remaining emissions that you can reduce you buy offsets at the very end kind of thing. So basically achieving by 2050 zero. For me I think that if you have the opportunity to be carbon neutral you should be and not wait for this. 2050 to me is a very long time from now if you can support some offset program which of course some of you are not as good but you support really good ones you can actually make a difference in terms of like environmental and social outcomes as well from those offsets which I'll talk about some of the offsets that we've chosen. So what I'm saying is that there are people who will say against carbon neutrality and just say that just go net zero I say go for carbon neutrality while you're going for net zero emissions. They complement each other they shouldn't be fighting each other I would say. Alright next one please. So I'll go through some of the nitty gritties of our programs next slide and before I go into that I just want to point out a couple of high level programs and achievements that we've got just to give you an idea of where we stand in terms of the world platform and also about where we develop some of our energy policies. So like I said we started developing that policy and strategy in 2008 and also we led the ZAR is the Zoos and Aquarium Association of Australia so basically I became the convener for the environmental sustainability specialist and scientific advisory group in 2010 so basically to lead all the other zoos towards sustainability as well and in that regard I'm also a co-author for Waza the world zoos and Aquarium Association for some articles such as the carbon neutrality or climate paper and also the single use plastics paper as well or guide they call that guide we started off like a formal skill up green training basically we want to bring more staff on board because sustainability while we have a lot of passionate stuff we want to make sure that they're up to speed in terms of sustainability and all the terminology for the EMS and things like that and so in July 2012 we got certified ISO 14001 that led to a series of things so formalizing that making sure that everybody has a role and responsibility that everything is formalized with procedures and things like that kind of kickstart a lot of programs as well along the way so everybody now has some kind of responsibility now it's just not me it's everybody's responsibility and if you look at the top part there the COP 18 is there and then on 2013 we became certified carbon neutral we started having like ESG guidelines we put up a prospectus which is actually like a plan in 2014 a plan because we've got so much ambition and we've got so little money we actually wanted to find partners that could bring along to that journey to develop other projects it could be renewable energy projects or anything so we actually developed this prospectus we kickstart a number of other projects as well some of them are pretty big COP 21 2015 we started this zero wasteland strategy in 2017 we developed a single-use plastics policy and some people might be wondering why is there a separate policy and that's because the senior executive team wants something more tangible because single-use plastics as you can imagine has got a high environmental impact and affects a lot of animals especially aquatic animals so that's why we developed a separate policy we put out another updated version of the prospectus we started the ESG procurement formally in 2021 and that's where we are at now next slide please and the bottom one is some of the projects you know tangible projects that we've done at the bottom starting 2008 one of the first things that we did was things like resource efficiency it's the first thing low-hanging fruits right so the thing that we come out so in efficient equipment was changed so like you know like innovation pumps where we can we put heat pump hot water systems where there's old tradition like hot water systems are replaced by that back then back then even I remember we had funding for like T5 fluorescent lamps of course now it's all LEDs these days but even I had to find funding for those sort of things so basically those things kickstart the environmental program as it goes and then we started looking at solar PVs and solar PVs dominated the sustainability program there's some ways programs along the way and water efficiency programs along the way as well as we went along but I think the renewable energy program is the one that is the hero for carbon reduction whereas the others because like water efficiency that doesn't have a huge carbon impact it's more about water saving okay all right next slide please the EMS protects natural assets for those who don't know right we actually and you come to the zoo as well you probably don't know that somewhere at the back there somewhere we have some natural places that we take care of and this is one of them this is my one of my favorite spots it's in Badger Creek Kilsu Sanctuary so behind a Kilsu Sanctuary which you don't see is this and so for us the EMS protects this sort of places that you don't see as well so we've got procedures and things like that to make sure that you know when contractors come to the place they use the most sustainable solutions for us do not pollute when they're on site and things like that and we ourselves in our operations use the least polluting thing possible I'll give an example right do you think about horticulture I mean this part of course you can't do it but Melbourne Zoo we even buy bugs to fight against other bugs insects eat other insects we buy them as well it's funny when you see them in our books all right next slide please and these are the other pictures of the other assets that's actually a lake in Hillsville of course Werribee River cuts across there and now in Kaibram there's a beautiful wetlands there's some magpie geese as well which you commonly don't see in the wetlands which is pretty amazing next slide please all right carbon neutrality this one is really interesting though if you think about where we started in so basically our base year is 2011 and 12 because we were certified in 2013 but we back calculate and when you first look at this chart you might think ah they haven't done much for the last few years kind of stuff like 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 years for the last 9 years after certification nothing has been done but actually there's enormous amount of work that's been done for the program you just don't see it because the zoo has actually changed when we first started the program we see a lot more visitors now than we did in the past we've got a lot more staff as well we use a lot more resources as well but we actually managed to curb our emissions okay all programed emissions would rise I would say probably about 20-30% rise I've got figures which I've calculated in the past but it's not in the slide here but because of the all the programs we've got is curbed the emissions and then with some big projects such as our composting on-site renewable energy project that has actually reduced our emissions by the thousands kind of stuff and now we are actually around about the 4,000 tonnes now so about 14,000 tonnes we started with now we have about 4,000 tonnes so it's about 70% reduction now next slide please something wrong oh jumped alright so in terms of the inventory if you see the pie of where the emissions come from those that are taken out have now been neutralised or reduced already so basically like green power it is 30% 36% we've got an off-site wind farm that produces powerful we've got a big on-site solar as well that's 5% waste composting is a big one that we do that's in the program now there are others as well that are not in the pie because that's prior to our certification so a lot of them are changing over pumps lighting and things that are not in this pie but that has been removed long before the certification so we are left with things like animal food which will be hard to reduce, gas we can so future projects will be decarbonising changing over gas appliances to electrical appliances and things like that employee travel we can't change much maybe a little bit through carpooling and things like that but transport we can probably a little bit we are thinking of electrifying some of our buses at Werribee and things like that so there are a few things we can reduce but we'll probably be left with another probably about 20% at that very end I would say okay next slide please now I'm showing you this slide because normally I don't show slides like this in my normal presentations I give but this one is a bit more technical I thought maybe I'll chuck in a couple of things being an engineer I love this sort of stuff so monitoring has been like the backbone at the back of the things that you see the things that I normally talk about I normally don't show these kind of slides because normally if you're not that sort of inclined you probably don't bother looking at it but it is so important for us everything like I say is evidence based I remember even doing a carbon cost marginal carbon cost reduction curve or something I can't remember what the term is back then that looks at different technologies and their respective benefits in terms of let's say offsetting and whatever that's on the offsetting line and below we would do so above we would try to find funding but if not everything that's below that offsetting line we would do so that's why a lot of projects were kickstart and a lot of efficiency programs were realized in that sense and to get them realized we need to do some measurements now this is pretty new for us it's been just for the past few years it hasn't been long but prior to this we used to go around measuring by hand looking at things looking at the back of the machine to find out what the consumption is taking some assumptions of their usage putting on those power meters portable ones where we can't measure them overnight or the week or whatever and getting a picture of the whole zoo with all trees I've got a whole list Excel spreadsheets and spreadsheets of all this other stuff every equipment I can measure and from there we make decisions on where to reduce and things like that now this is like the Rolls Royce for us this is actually about more automating measurements so putting in meters so you can see trees here because we haven't measured the entire room yet so basically we need to add a few more meters here and there but this gives us real-time data on what's being consumed how much energy is being consumed at each zoo the incoming all the incoming meters and also the first level consumption as well so basically the distribution from the incoming so we can see like the bottom there it says the from D before that shows you the line that's going into the restaurant and the other picture on the right shows you for each line that we're measuring it gives you the phases of the electricity that's used the power quality as well the power factor and things like that as well we can measure and we can see the power quality of the line that electricity that's going in as well so we can pick problems that could be happening let's say a power factor correction needs to be done because some other equipment is disturbing the power and things like that so we could have then in the future a better picture of what's going on next slide please and we also have another set of tools this is our roving set of meters so basically it's a set of CTs that we clamp on electrical lines so basically we've got this set where after the first line and if we see unusual consumption or high consumption we could actually use this to clamp on things and then measure it for a specific number of time and then plot out the energy flow so with this energy flow we can then work out like you know that you know the BB-1 or whatever it's high consumption though so if it was me or anybody or electrical person they will actually then focus on that because the opportunities could be in that in that area so you want to focus on that and detect and see what's going on, where the high consuming equipment are work out are they working at the optimum rate is there something wrong is there bearings often you need to change and things like that you might get a heat gun to go and measure and see where heat is escaping and things like that could work out stuff for efficiency alright next slide please and we also generate heat maps in the site and this heat map is actually generated by actually walking around doing energy audits and things like that working out what sort of equipment is there how much they're consuming and that gives us a picture about where we're focusing as well alright next slide please and from there I just picked out and let's say a sector 5 and sector 5 we can actually then look and see different types of consumption in a more granular level and how much is being consumed about proportion as well okay next slide please and then I'll give some examples of some of the initiatives that has come out from this and the first one of course is our renewable energy program I would say like to say the hero of the carbon reduction the most so where we can we have actually come to a stage where we've filled up all our roof spaces already for bigger installations we can probably put a small one in a 3-4 kilowatt type once space under 10 but all the big ones have been absorbed through all the roof tops already when you come to the zoo you can't see them but trust me they're up there somewhere so we've got around about 624 kilowatts on site solar PV some might think it's not terribly big I would say but that's all the roof spaces we've got because we've got anymore exhibits and things like that our buildings are not the features of our zoos the meal picture this is the one we've got about 55 kilowatt in our corporate office that's probably the biggest single installation we've got and you see the Melbourne skyline my favourite of course is the solar forest on the right at Barabee as you come into Barabee you'll see that it doesn't produce and while it's one of my favourites it's actually one of the the worst in terms of like return on investment and the reason for that is because it's one of our showcase ones it's an off-grid system it's made from recycle timber so basically we've got three types of renewable energy projects one of course of our on-site solar the other second one is a power purchase for a wind farm and the third one is actually just green power from the grid the next slide please is that the next one yeah coming to our zero waste landfill program that's the next biggest coming in emissions area we as you can imagine we're a zoo so we produce a lot of organic waste from our animals, from our horticulture from our parks and things like that food as well that we produce for visitors and for our own staff kitchens or animal kitchens as well so we actually use to dump them to landfill because there's no solutions in the city area so it became unsustainable we know the greenhouse gas emissions are high so one of the big projects we implemented is this in-vessel composter so the in-vessel composter compost round about two tons two tons of organic waste per day and this has been like a savior for us and other than that we recycle a lot of other things as well next slide please this is our single use plastics policy part and parcel is zero waste landfill like I said before the single use plastics policy is something that's really important for us the picture that you see is actually our post-mix solution so basically we ban plastic bottles amongst other things as well so I'm just highlighting the bottles but that has changed the way we look at single use plastics at our zoo so basically things like this is so important for those who wear everything like single use plastics as you can imagine you might not think about it whatever that ends up as litter and things like that ends up in the ocean and then aquatic animals especially mistake them for food those that are not consume of course break down and become microplastics that you see but you can't see them but as you can you see in terms of people getting in their bloodstream fish eating them and things like that so it becomes part and parcel of the food chain okay so that's something that's not good for anyone so because of that we developed this policy and the world zoos aquarium association as well we understand on single use plastics as well so basically all the other zoos are following suit implementing something like what we've implemented so this initiative that you see here the single use plastics has reduced around about 600,000 plastic bottles or about 12 tons of plastics per year which is amazing and our contractor for this soft drinks have actually made a tremendous effort in implementing such a program it's almost like a trial to them so they can be implemented elsewhere so you get all sorts of flavors and things like that when you come to the zoo we're still working on the best solution for the cups we're looking at things like souvenir cups and things like that that can be reused but in the meantime it's like compostable cups after drinking from the cup you chuck the cup into our compost bin and then from there it goes to our composter so basically whatever that you finish eating or drinking with goes to the backup house gets composted so that you don't have emissions that comes from there okay water efficiency this one here we think about in Melbourne Zoo we use a lot of water to maintain the gardens there's a lot of water used so we've got a water treatment plant at the back of Melbourne Zoo that produce a tremendous amount of water around about close to 100 mega liters of water per year when we first got the plant it was meant to be just for the environmental protection which is good but we actually turn it a little bit for it and make it more efficient by producing more so that we can reduce our dependence on portable water so reducing the cost as well and also the energy use as well through a number of things like having wetlands backwashing with recycled water so you don't have to use the osmosis systems and things like that alright next slide please yeah so this one is just a simulation of the zoo in terms of where we go so basically this is everything at a zoo now is connected in some form or another so it's actually a closed system and that closed system actually works as well as our environmental protection so just any spills like contamination spills let's say chemicals fuel or whatever kind of stuff it gets captured in the system and it gets locked up into tanks and things like that alright next slide please this one here is about you know in the zoo one of the highlights when coming to the zoo it's not just the animals, it's also about the unique plants that we have and they're managed very well through a system of like a central irrigation control system where we monitor things like weather soil moisture even plant water up which Richard will talk about right about that project that we've got so basically it's about having knowledge and measurements to actually optimally keeping plants alive with the best growth and health next one please ESG procurement is something that we are doing now in a formal sense like I mentioned before we used to have sustainable procurement but now it is a formalized program we've got finance department in there we've got all the contracts managers in there together with sustainably people so we form a team to make sure that the people that we want to deal with is the right people like companies and things like that we've got the right policies in place and the right product standards as well to meet certain things that are of significance to say sustainable seafood, sustainable wood products and things like that right next slide please carbon offsets I'll just give one example instead of the three because I think we're running out of time carbon offsets some people still think that you know it's not something that is a good thing to do but for us as a conservation organization it is imperative for us that if you're going to offset we buy offsets that protect the natural environment and these are some of the offsets that we have chosen and we also try to pick offsets that got biodiversity type certifications alongside with carbon certifications as well and the reason being we want to make sure that those areas are protected well and well managed as well and their social as well as environmental benefits associated with those offsets alright next slide please this example for instance from the offsets there's employment in place schools, equal factories and things like that there are a lot of trees we planted things that we want to see endangered animals protected as well elephants and things like that alright next slide please yeah I think we will skip that one because this one is similar but just in a different location competency and awareness is something that we do a lot right we don't talk about it a lot but in-house we've got like training modules we've got currently two training modules for general staff and we're developing specific ones as uncovered by the EMS we've completed like you know the skill upgrim program which is a competency based program so under development there are things like you know resource efficiency, waste management and so on but having said that we've got three green teams across our or they're three groups now and we're developing one for Khyber so we'll have green teams across all our zoos and those green teams are actually part and parcel of the way we inform and infiltrate to all staff so basically the green team members represent a department so they're actually there for a purpose to make sure that the information and the programs trickle back into their departments they're no longer like volunteers in the past okay next slide please so the current projects and priorities like I said this is a prospectus which is like a plan so basically it's about like energy monitoring it's a big one for us to uncover more you know I mean so we've come to a stage where we need to dig deeper into where those opportunities are and if going through a decarbonization of those other fossil fuels like gas equipments and vehicles and also looking at ESC procurement because you know the inputs are so important like if you've got good inputs then you don't have to deal with the outputs that are not so good alright next slide I think that's it for me Excellent work Khyber Can you hear me completely? Apologies everyone for the technical challenges we've had here today it's good to see most people have stuck around for the presentation so I'm just going to talk briefly because we've got quite a few questions about a project we have done at the Melbourne Zoo what it highlighted to me is some of the things that Khyam's been talking about particularly like the heat map representation where you really do need to break up your facilities into these management areas of meaning and you need to correlate them with the data you have which sometimes involves quite a bit of extrapolation and this project was really about trying to measure the water use of the various plant assemblages that are quite diverse through the Melbourne Zoo as you can imagine and then have feedback from that coming in for how they set and control their irrigation system at Melbourne Zoo now you probably know where but Melbourne Zoo has hundreds and hundreds of sprinkler heads and hundreds and hundreds of solenoids that control those sprinkler heads and when they're turned on and off so it is quite unusual set up in terms of being able to influence water use when you know and can monitor how much water it really needs so this project was about assessing the water status of the soil and plant communities across the site and assessing the effectiveness of the irrigation activities and this was a project managed by the zoo by Giuseppe Greco who is a regular participant on our webinars many thanks Giuseppe really the big take home message I have about this project was we had a limited amount of budget to measure we chose technologies which allowed us to understand plant uptake itself as well as moisture stress in the soil using soil moisture sensors so a few different sorts of sensors so dendometers for tree water use and soil moisture capacitance probes for the soil side of things the challenge was into how to extrapolate that across various areas of the zoo to provide meaningful information back to Giuseppe who sets all the sort of delivery through those solenoids and we did that by breaking the site up into management areas where we had water use needs for those areas these days with the Bureau of Meteorology data you can move more to a forecasting approach so it doesn't need to be just based on current data but it can also be based on forecast data to get ahead of the curve there and that can be automated into such networks but it's been a fantastic project we've got a lot of data on how much you know 100 year plus old trees like these massive fig trees suck out of the ground at the zoo as well as our different sort of assemblages of plants need different amounts of water at different times and the outcome of this has been significant reductions significant reductions in the amount of water used all right so without further ado I think we'll skip over the lessons learnt and go to the questions that have been raised so how can we improve transparency in carbon offsets well I think that is actually quite an interesting question and something that we have to answer because we've got this request on why we're choosing offsets as well and I think the problem with offsets is that there are some of course a bit dodgy offsets that's tainted the whole offset program I would say for us we use kind of the standards that I've actually adopted and approved by the climate active certification so somewhere in Canberra there's a department that looks after all the methodologies of carbon offsets and only accept the ones that are actually deemed to have methodologies that are tangible like transparent, tangible measurable and all that kind of addresses leakage and things like that so we are confident in the sense that in our carbon neutral certification we're picking the certificate body that looks and also the government is part parcel of that making sure that those offsets are tangible and real and because of that I think that should be fine so if you're new to these and you're looking for offsets kind of stuff the key things like to look for the methodology and look for methodology that has been assessed by somebody else that body somebody and also for us looking at the core benefits as well it's a big one and making sure that you know some of the projects that you're going to buy do not let's say harm the environment or cause harm to the locals within that region as well whether that answered everything but yeah there are a lot of different schemes that certify carbon offsets there's a lot of methodologies around heaps it seems like a challenge it is challenging so I think sticking to some known methodologies that has been assessed by somebody independent I think it's the key for me okay thanks for that answer next question what carbon neutral initiatives have been implemented? Victoria how have I measured what is the next I think I've answered most of them in my slides already and they're all measured based on the carbon active framework for carbon neutrality has a lot of measurements these days so they got like missions factors so you know if you use a certain amount of mega joules or something of some energy it equates to how much greenhouse gases kind of stuff and the national greenhouse gas factors have got a lot of measurement already but climate active have their own list now and they're building on that list as well but having said that if you're really interested kind of stuff in that sense when we first started becoming carbon neutral we actually had to do a life cycle analysis for certain things like food for instance because there are no emissions factors back then for those things so the next space is actually decarbonizing some of our fossil fuels like gas and fuel next question I'm interested in understanding how the net zero elements will look earlier into our system environmental management system so our EMS actually looks after everything and our EMS goes beyond just environmental protection if you look at our aspects and impacts register you see more than just pollution controls and things like that so it's about consumption as well consumption of resources and things like that I included either EMS so that's how we integrated carbon emissions into the EMS so the EMS is not just about environmental protection it's about sustainability as well if you know about EMS we'll probably get what I'm talking about yeah next question Kian, methods of carbon accounting used so the methods is actually a combination started off using the greenhouse gas protocol as the basis of everything but the climate activists have got their own standards of calculation which is very similar to the greenhouse gas protocol which is internationally accepted all over the world okay next question do zoos Victoria aim to eventually not have to purchase carbon credits or is it just not feasible it's not feasible everybody probably have to buy credits at the very end if you do down the net zero emissions pathway there are definitely going to be things that you will not be able to reduce so you probably have to buy offsets at the very end so we will continue buying offsets it's just that now we are reducing so much 70% reduction I would imagine that we will be left with about 20% that we will just have to somehow continue buying for eternity that's an interesting point for eternity are there going to be enough carbon offsets yeah that's the thing if everybody goes on that path that's what I've been thinking about if everybody were to buy carbon offsets we have seen carbon offset prices increase as well as a result of the new interest in like net zero emissions and carbon neutrality the prices have gone up significantly sometimes even double yeah we're going to have to innovate some things now we will innovate and find new ways of course reduction is obviously number one thing that you should be doing and offsets is the secondary thing is to patch the things that you can do yeah basically yeah alright we've got 12 questions in the Q&A Kiyama are you happy to go yep I'm happy to go along thanks very much for that okay so the first question is from Kelly Wickham hi Kiyama long time no here yeah do you engage with your supply chain about their own carbon management strategies yeah good question now I know that a lot of suppliers we've got a few like you know we started with a few thousand all sorts of things we're like a community we just don't have a handful of suppliers we have a lot of different suppliers for fencing and for all sorts of things hardware to animal food and things like that so there's a wide range of suppliers as well some big some small and the challenge we've got is actually engaging everyone so through this new the ESG procurement process we have actually got now a software management system that requires every single one of them to actually tell us about their programs and their questions about carbon as well and things like that as well which you have to pick and I was surprised to find that some of them are carbon neutral as well which is good of course not enough but some of them are I thought that none of them were but some of them are so this is our first stage of engaging with our suppliers and it's been a hard slog I would say because a lot of people are not ready for it but we are going to push on and make sure that we will prefer like-minded organizations as to start and those that are willing to learn and improve you will assist them to improve as well along that journey it's interesting just to reflect on what you've shown us today what's a very comprehensive list of changes you've made at the zoo just that's a massive commitment for other organizations I think it's a great place for example yeah it is hard yeah it is hard for some of the suppliers to comply sometimes like you know if you've got a new policy in place about let's say not having a single use plastic for certain things and they're supplying things based on the American market then you'll be running into trouble with that supplier because we're just not big enough to influence them yet we want them to change so there's some challenges there which we're trying to iron out alright next question Martin O'Rourke are offsets achieved by buying existing vegetated areas on a cleared land buying replanted vegetated areas or planting out new vegetation on a cleared margin of land it's a mix of all the three depending on where which offset program we buy so every year we go out for a request for quotes for projects and we look at those projects and some of them are like it could be a cleared land that is going to be now protected for natural growth some could be an active management reforestation project and so on so it all depends so I don't have a specific thing and we evaluate every project differently every year we've got a evaluation panel an international program manager that goes around to different countries looking at different conservation projects so he sits on the evaluation project and advises us on those locations as well as looking at how tangible and how the methodology of the offsets and things like that so it's a mixture Kim just reflecting on an earlier comment where you said you help organisations that are like-minded and want to go down this path why what exactly would you do like say hydrogen to become carbon neutral what's the interaction like a number of ways we actually have a formal training program as well like a program that you can actually get from us sometimes it's free sometimes you just pay for stuff that's one way we also are willing to share information as well like site visits and things like that we've done quite a few in the past and also like you know for people who for suppliers that are interested in sustainability we could actually have joined initiatives as well in the past we've done that and so on so it all depends on who the suppliers are what their intentions are and things like that and that's a consultancy we have like a consultancy which I run some training program in is it restricted to training or is it also more hands-on preparing is more training kind of program we run a couple of different consultancy type programs in our from a corporate office sustainability is one of them and some of them could be like animal husbandry and things like that as well okay well it's good to know yeah we do next question I've got a few sort of just comforting me that we got back online thank you could have told me earlier Keith Thompson is the next question is the organic waste composting facilities available to other urban organisations that produce a lot of organic waste is underutilisation of facilities you've installed an issue that is a really good question though sadly we've had to stop receiving waste we used to do a lot of there's a lot of not-for-profit organisations people like fair share re-ground and things like that people who you know those organisations that prepare or collect you know like throw away or you know like they will boot and things like that from restaurants and repurpose them for the homeless and stuff like that we used to actually collect I mean they used to come to MoZoo and deposit their organic waste it's just that we find that because of the new legislation that come in as well and the permissions and things like that we've actually had to stop for the time being until we get clarity from EPA and also because we are at the point where operations like I say have always increased we are at a point where if you look at old thresholds from SEP EPA SEP we're actually at the threshold of those thresholds in the sense that accepting acceptable organic waste in a certain area without any kind of licensing and things like that so we have decided now to halt taking external organic waste until such we come back to speed after COVID-19 making sure that everything is running properly and things like that and then just checking in with EPA as well regarding you know where the licensing is required or if these permissions just the way to go and so on yeah so it's just up on the air now yeah it's one of those dilemmas where you have regulation that sort of most inflicts with the ultimate policy objective and walking through those things yeah and I think that when I spoke to EPA about this issue they said that the aim is not to actually deter you from doing good things they just want to know what you're doing kind of stuff so we're meeting with EPA soon to discuss further but then in my my permissions pathway applications and things like that I did mention that you know if allowed to we will probably continue taking external waste there okay next question we're taking that it's in the memory how did the zoo respond to the cessation of the soft plastic collection recycling program so good question as well for those who don't know I think we probably skip one slide during that I saw a slide which I thought where is that slide kind of stuff that's missing from my presentation that slide shows the tree bin system and the tree bin system is the one that we used to have when there was soft plastic collection and we had a single use plastic policy in place we looked at our bin system and realized that really we could just introduce a soft plastic bin and we don't need a landfill bin anymore so we actually have a tree bin system without landfill soft plastic was recycled but now with the issue of soft plastics now in Victoria now everything can be recycled even our clean plastics so what we've done is it's now going to landfill of course but we have just found another supplier that could possibly take some soft plastics from the back of house so you might see more recycling coming out of the zoo rather than going to landfill but we haven't acted on it contractually yet and we're looking at the pricing and things like that Next question from John Flett what happens to the compost produced when it contains plastics and does the CO2 release as it breaks down can't there is no soft plastic in our compost we actually have a sorting facility before it goes we sort the waste before it goes into the compost so basically if you're going to put anything that's mixed or could be contaminated we go through conveyor and then the staff actually picking out some of the contaminants like soft plastics and things like that some visitors may not have done the right thing and then we only put organics in the compost it produces very little greenhouse gas emissions unlike if you send it to landfill in an anaerobic environment it produces a lot of methane and methane produces it's a very high greenhouse gas it's got a high greenhouse gas factor Right Next question I will essentially just Ahmad Bashir from Canada wants to introduce him by their arm Nick Lawson sustainability is a very important issue for young people especially I think some of us oldies care about it too Nick have you reached out and engaged in a youth groups or individuals regarding your projects Yes we do we have a very extensive youth program there is something that you may not realise as well while the zoo is a fun facing zoo and visitors buy tickets and go in we have got a lot of educational programs so I speak a lot in school groups as well when school groups come and it's it's about learning about conservation as well as sustainability as well so it's part and parcel of our educational programs Good Thank you Good on you Liz Cary is showing some empathy towards you saying Sims you have a huge job do you have a big team of people supporting you Yes I started on my with one person that supports me a sustainability officer and that grew to now every zoo has got a sustainability professional so now I'm going to say every zoo means three main zoos, Khairul hasn't got any yet but there is one at Werribee Hillsville and Melbourne they're all dedicated for sustainability and below them there could be support offices like Melbourne Zoo has got a dedicated support officer for sustainability and in that team we've got green team members so there's probably about 10 also for each site and those green team members are like nominated by the department to represent their department in that zoo so that's how it works these days It's interesting to sort of see what the ratio of staff required and professionals is to the size of the facility to achieve what is it a 70% reduction and it's an amazing effort and it's probably good companies to sort of understand what that sort of percentage needs to be of staff it's more business owners amusing next there's an anonymous attendee saying is it just me or is Kiyaa muted I think it's just you Madeleine Willam saying that considering zoo's Victoria's conservation impact do you think the net game biodiversity market could help you moving from net zero to nature positive hmm hmm not sure I think nature positive not sure what it means but I would imagine for us as a conservation organization you think that for us we are bound by Victoria because we're a state government organization so the programs that we run are based on Victorian species and habitats and things like that so we don't look after other places even though we've got a lot how island stick insect program but most of them are Victorian based so to get a net like nature positive or whatever it is it will mean that we probably have to influence a lot more than what we can do and what our jurisdictions are but having said that we do our very best because we've got a good representation for other places or pig bodies such as the world zoos and aquarium association and also the Australian zoos and aquarium association as well it's interesting to see where your influence can go maybe even just through the training care seems to me there's a great opportunity to do that hmm next question I'm just checking out time not quite a few people hanging on to your every word Kiam thanks excellent thank you for that so the next person is Nick Radden Kovic is all of the composted waste reused on site or does it go to another receivable facility or land do you compost the bioplastics biopac polylactic acids cups etc on site or are they sent to an industrial composting facility all bioplastics are composted on site start of the we the in vessel composter it's such an amazing piece of equipment it actually composts on its own through biological action raised up to a pretty high temperature so everything breaks down very nicely so if you put any bioplastics in there you will not see it you put like even like cutlery and things like that are bioplastics you put it at the very end in 10 days time we wouldn't see it anymore it's completely broken down so that that's a good thing so we compost everything like that after the composting process is used in a number of ways the first priority of course if we want to use it in our own garden we would use it across all our tree zoos we would use them so currently there is a high demand to be used at Werribee so we send a lot of our waste against waste to Werribee now in the past we have sent it to nurseries in the past and also in the past is sent to a bagging station as well a bagging facility not station and a composting facility as well where it's a commercial operation not our operations it's just somebody else they actually get our compost process it further because our compost goes through the machine for 10 days but to be a commercial compost you need to go through further processes so they take care of that and they bag them as zoogro so you can buy them from nurseries from nurseries commercial nurseries you can create some money back from the sale of those zoogro oh okay okay does it make much money for you Kiam? I know it's not a heavy money maker I think it's better for us to use it on site there yeah alright we're up to the last question Anthony Quinn and it's more a statement that it says thanks Kiam and Richard and he wants to know if we can provide recordings all of the webinar recordings are saved to our websites if you go on to our website and look under it's the news tab you'll find a recording of the webinar which will have everything you've seen today so on that note I just like to really thank you Kiam I think what Zeus Victoria is doing is truly inspiring and it does provide a really leading example of where we all need to head so I would have thought the world's your oyster in terms of being able to provide that sort of advisory service that you're referring to in terms of training so many thanks for participating today and many thanks also to the technical support team here at HydraTerror you've had to scramble a bit too to my laptop so thanks to you too Gleadson and Gordon thank you Kiam thank you very much for those who are still around thank you very much for attending


Global climate models use the laws of physics to simulate our planet's climates. They're so sophisticated they have to be run on some of the world's fastest supercomputers. It can take months to run a single simulation. So how do climate models work? They're mathematical representations of the Earth's climates. And to simulate the climate, they divide the Earth, its ocean, and atmosphere into a three-dimensional grid. Factors like temperature, wind, and rainfall are calculated at each grid point to predict their future climate changes. As computing power is improved, the size of those grids has gotten smaller and smaller. Essentially, better computers allow us to make more and more detailed models. Today's models are so high resolution that we need supercomputers to run them. Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius is often credited with creating the world's first climate model over a century ago. This computer was made up of a pencil, paper, and his brain. Arrhenius estimated that a doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would result in global surface warming of about 5 to 6 degrees Celsius. That's only a few degrees from the estimates we get today from our complex models and supercomputers. Not bad for a pencil and paper in the 1800s. Detailed modeling of the Earth's climate really began in the 1950s and 60s. The first climate model that combined how the oceans and atmosphere work was developed in the late 1960s. Over the past 50 years, our understanding of the details of the Earth's climate and our ability to simulate it have continued to improve. Today's models include components representing the atmosphere, oceans, land surface, and sea ice. The atmospheric component simulates greenhouse gases, clouds, and aerosols. Aerosols are tiny particulates released by volcanic eruptions and from the burning of fossil fuels. They both deflect sunlight and play a role in cloud formation. In climate models, the atmospheric component plays a major role in moving heat and water around the globe. The land surface component simulates characteristics of the Earth's surface like vegetation, snow cover, soil moisture, rivers, and carbon storage. The ocean component of climate models simulates the movement and mixing of ocean currents. This is a critical component for an accurate climate model. The ocean is the main reservoir of both heat and carbon in the Earth's climate system. The sea ice component plays a big role in the amount of heat reflected or absorbed by the Earth. Ice is very reflective whereas dark oceans absorb sunlight. That means it's important to simulate changes in sea ice if you want to climate models to accurately represent changes in the reflectivity of the Earth's surface. Sea ice also plays a big role in heat exchanges between the ocean and atmosphere. In all these different parts of the climate, scientists calculate different variables like temperature or rainfall in each part of the grid using equations based on the laws of physics. The models compute how these variables change over time and simulate how they interact with one another. So global climate models are based on well understood physics. The results of individual simulations by each climate model are checked by a large community of climate modelers and researchers around the world. Climate models have been able to produce simulations of current and past climates that match observations. Models have also accurately simulated 20th century climate change including increased warming due to human carbon emissions. They predict many other features of the climate system like the Earth's infrared spectrum, patterns of rainfall, and changes in warming patterns. This gives us confidence in using these models to project future climate change.  This myth suffers from the fallacy of impossible expectations. No model can ever be perfect. By setting the bar at a level they can never reach, contourians can always reject climate model predictions. But as the statistician George Box once wrote, all models are wrong, but some are useful. Global climate models are certainly useful tools. They represent sophisticated simulations of the Earth's climate. Their level of detail and resolution has improved dramatically over the past several decades. Our confidence in their ability to protect future climate change is based on their ability to reproduce past climate change, whether over the 20th century or longer time scales, and the current climate.