MAKE GOOD

Julia and Jordy Kay are the entrepreneurs behind the incredible success of Great Wrap - a company that produces compostable cling wrap and pallet wrap, originating in Melbourne. During our conversation, Jordy and Kay stepped us through the company's inception four years ago to its current state of operation - a 10,000 sqm factory in Tullamarine. They also shared insights into their valued university R+D partners and the process of turning potatoes into plastic.

Bassike is an iconic fashion label started in 2006 by Deborah Sams and Mary-Lou Ryan with the simple intention of creating sophisticated clothing with organic cotton fabrics. This set up the framework for a successful label with sustainable thinking in its brand DNA. When we caught up with Deb we unpacked the importance and challenges of producing clothes in Australia, making clothes to last and their recent BCorp certification.

Brae, a renowned restaurant and 23-acre farm in Birregurra, Victoria, is co-owned and led by chef Dan Hunter. We caught up with Dan to unpack the thinking and processes behind Brae's innovative and incredibly detailed dining experience. He shared how their pursuit of pleasure drives the creation of food that evokes emotions, memories, and delight, how they incorporate lesser-known cuts of local meat and how they practice regenerative farming.

Tim Read is a doctor who has lived in Brunswick since the early 1990s. A passionate climate change activist, Tim was elected as the state MP for Brunswick in 2018 and became the first Greens MP for the electorate. Tim is a little outside of the artist, designer and entrepreneur guests we usually have on the show. However, we felt that policy design and the high-level implementation of design ideas through state parliament was an interesting process to unpack and discuss on the show. In this conversation we covered the process for policy ideas to become law and legislation, the power of public health to drive change in other sectors such as energy policy, welfare/homelessness, social housing and transport and what Tim's day to day life is like when working as a state MP.

Nick Dowse is the founder of “Honey Fingers”, an urban beekeeping collective, honey brand and creative studio in Melbourne.  Honey Fingers explores bee cultures and the intersections between farming, food, art, history, design and education in the context of bees, bee keeping and honey. 

Once called "the poster boy for zero-waste living" by the New York times, Joost Bakker has making things using waste and discarded items professionally for more than 25 years. He is probably best known for his series of zero waste restaurants called Greenhouse, Silo and Brothl but also has an extensive back catalogue of other projects across art, floristry, hospitality, event design and construction.His latest project is Future Food System—a self sustaining, zero waste, productive house that demonstrates the potential of our homes to provide shelter, produce food and generate energy. Joost is prolific and endlessly creative. He sees the world through the lens of an artist and is able to connect systems, objects and ideas in a unique way, helping others to see the inherent value in the stuff we throw out. 

Courtney Holm is an expert in circular fashion and the founder of A.BCH, a circular fashion label working and making clothes in Melbourne. She's extremely principled and aside from making beautiful clothes, is using A.BCH to challenge the status quo in an industry known for producing enormous amounts of waste. The lengths that Courtney and the team at A.BCH have gone to create fully bio-circular clothing are quite extraordinary, with the development of garments that are completely produced from natural materials, durable, easily repaired and ultimately bio degradable. 

In 2014 Jeremy McLeod and the team at Breathe Architecture completed an innovative, ethical, self-driven apartment development called The Commons. Despite selling very well and winning a number of awards, it did little to shift the market in a more ethical direction.This led Jeremy and his partner Tam to start Nightingale Housing in 2016—a not for profit that produces financially, socially and environmentally sustainable housing at-cost. Since then Nightingale has completed four buildings with another 12 on the on the way. In this episode of the podcast Jeremy and I delve into how and why Nightingale has evolved over its journey, the design principles the company sees as critical for its work, and how to ensure that every architectural project can have an impact through implementing a few fundamental principles of sustainability that just make sense.

Ever heard of a family office? Jake Milgrom is one of 3 siblings who founded Tripple, an ethical and transparent family office focussed on impact in investment in the usually secretive and opaque world of family offices. In this episode we find out what family offices are and how Jake and his siblings are building a road map and replicable business model for high wealth individuals, to encourage greater investment in ethical startups, real estate, shares and debt. Jake's not a designer but we wanted to have Jake on the podcast as his insight into sustainability from an investment perspective - which is often a critical component for getting projects off the ground. 

Make Good is a monthly conversation with Australian artists, designers and entrepreneurs that examines the role of design in shaping society and culture. Kristy Barber is a pattern maker who started Melbourne slow fashion label Kuwaii as a response to the waste and philosophy of fast fashion. Over it's 14 year life Kuwaii has evolved to be an industry leader as a zero waste, locally made, ethical brand. Kuwaii's approach to making clothes centres around designing for forever and is a human centred process that imagines how every person involved in the lifecycle of the garments from supply chain to purchaser can benefit most from the decisions made by the design team.  In this episode we discuss how Kristy's core values of durability and timelessness and have shaped the brand, the criticism that the brand attracted as they developed a more inclusive size range and the perception that many fashion brands are moving away from sustainability and transparency in the post pandemic world.