Businesses can help safeguard the environmental future of our planet by greening their money, according to adventurer and best-selling author Simon Reeve.
Simon was talking to Reed Talent Solutions’ Managing Director, Lee Gudgeon, last week as part of the largest networking and learning festival for the talent acquisition industry, RecFest.
During the presentation on the event’s Resourcing Leaders Stage, Simon revealed his own inspiring recruitment journey – and how weird foods and danger have become a central part of his life.
The BBC presenter and travel documentary maker, who described the programmes he makes as “incorporating issues and adventures,” also spoke about the environmental challenges the world is facing and how business can respond.
He said companies can make a huge difference through the “power of finance” and by investing in cleaner rather than dirty industries.
How business can help the planet
Simon told a packed audience that during his travels around the world he has heard first-hand about environmental problems caused by people in the developed world.
He said: “From the very start of my travels, I would turn up in remote parts of the world and indigenous people who aren’t connected to the rest of the planet would start saying to me that they could see their part of the world changing.
“That came as a shock to me. They would say, ‘we can see this happening, do you know why?’ And I felt like an emissary from the wealthy world, and I had to say it’s because my people are inflicting this on you.”
Simon said it is people in the Tropics – “the hottest, sweatiest, most beautiful, biodiverse, poorest and most corrupt part of the planet” – who are suffering the most.
While acknowledging that what he does – travel – has an impact, he insisted tourism can be “a force for good” and said industries such as fashion, concrete and plastics “need to green up”.
“They have gigantic carbon footprints,” he said. “They are part of the fabric of our existence, and we need to look at them as well as at travel and tourism.”
He urged people to travel to more remote places and try new experiences: “There are 10,000 special wilderness areas around planet Earth that rely on tourism money to survive. It pays for their guards, their rangers, the fuel to go in anti-poaching patrol vehicles.
“They need that income. Those places will be really impacted if you don’t go.”
One of his biggest messages to companies and employers was around how they can invest their money, particularly when it comes to pension schemes.
“Greening the average British pension is at least 20 times more powerful at reducing your individual carbon footprint than going vegetarian and stopping flying every day for the rest of your life,” he said, before urging businesses to listen to employees who are increasingly telling them that they “want to be part of change and leave the world a better place”.
Eating pig fat – and taking on the KGB
Simon also told listeners at RecFest about some of his favourite journeys, and the trials and tribulations he has had to face along the way.
He cited a trip around the Indian Ocean as one of his favourites.
“It had glorious sunshine as well as proper struggle and hardship,” he said. “It had Mauritius and the Maldives alongside the problems of places like Somalia.
“In many ways, that was my favourite journey because it incorporated those extreme elements of life on planet Earth.
“That's what we try and incorporate into the programmes. They're not just about science. They're not just about wildlife. They're about everything. Human existence, what we do, what we touch, what we create, what we destroy.”
Simon revealed that along the way he has experienced everything from eating pig fat covered in chocolate to being arrested by the KGB.
That incident came during a trip to Transnistria, where the old Soviet secret police still held sway.
He said: “We were actually arrested by them while we were creeping through some bushes trying to film a secret Russian military base.”
Simon revealed that he and his team were locked in cells and were only saved when their guide told the guards that he was “related to the Queen of England”.
“I'd been gossiping away with her the day before, and I'd been saying that my family's only claim to fame is that we're somehow, my mum reckons, distantly related to Sir Christopher Wren,” he said.
“She was really impressed by that. And she turned up at the KGB headquarters in the middle of the night, banging on the door.
“She got the KGB colonel out of bed, he was coming downstairs, putting his uniform on. She said you cannot arrest these people. You bring terrible shame on Transnistria. He's related to the Queen of England.”
Simon, who also told the audience how other culinary delights he has tasted during his travels include Zebu penis soup and roasted sheep's eyeballs, was even given a KGB cap badge as a souvenir following the incident.
Taking each day as it comes to achieve success
If Simon’s professional career has presented some unusual challenges, the route he followed to get there was equally incredible – and inspiring.
He told Lee how after growing up “in a very ordinary part of West London” and struggling at school, it had been an interview with a JobCentre employee that helped change his life.
“I was very naughty as a kid,” Simon said. “I was making petrol bombs by the time I was 12 and using them as well.
“I'm not proud of it, but by the time I was 13, 14, I was having a lot of trouble in my family and in school as well. I had a lot of mental health problems.”
He underwent teenage mental health counselling, but despite that was “overwhelmed with panic and fear” when it came to taking exams.
“I got up and walked out of the exam hall and I never went back,” he said.
“I flunked out of school without any real qualifications at all. And I properly spiralled down into a dark place. If I'm totally honest, I was lost.
“I had no qualifications, no ambitions, I had no path to a job or university or anything like that. I had no girlfriend. I felt really lost, hopeless, helpless and pathetic.
“I found myself on the edge of a bridge at one point. I probably hit rock bottom, and it was just luck that I stepped back and I tried to make a bit of a go at life.”
It was then that he had what he calls “the most important interview of my life.
“I was saying to the woman signing me on, ‘I don't know what to do in my life’. We're all told we have a five-year plan, but she said, don't think too far ahead. Take things step by step.
“Those were the words I needed to hear. It became a bit of a mantra for me. Don't think too far into the future, just take each little day as it comes and break difficult challenges down into their component parts.
“So don't look at the top of the mountain. Look at the tree that's just in front of you. Make it there, then make it to the boulder.”
Simon’s newfound mantra eventually led him to a job working as a post boy at the Sunday Times newspaper – although only after an employer hiring for a white van driver told him, “you're the only person who's applied and I'm still not giving you the job”.
But by that point he had developed a determination and resilience to work hard and succeed.
He said: “The Sunday Times became my university. It became my start in life. And I was so lucky.
“I think far too few people recognise the role luck plays in our existence. I had friends who fell by the wayside along the way, who ended up in prison, who were stabbed, had terrible luck, who became addicted in one form or the other.”
Simon said once the door to opportunity was open, he just “went for it”: “I said yes to everything, and people gave me chances and opportunities, and I was very lucky.
“I became the expert on how to fix the photocopiers. That made me unsackable. I went and got sandwiches for people.
“I didn't feel special, so I grafted, and I said yes when people asked me to do things. And then I had some lucky breaks.
“I started working as a researcher. Eventually, I became the youngest staff writer in the history of Times Newspapers.”
Simon’s story shows the value of opportunity and work, and of giving young people a chance.
He said: “I think people saw my enthusiasm, a willingness, an ability to graft. But I think enthusiasm was key.
“That was what I brought to the table. I was a bit wide-eyed. It was my first job. I'd never been on a plane until I started working.
“It was a totally new world for me. But what they gave me, and this has been a hallmark for me since the very beginning, was that everyone was really welcoming. They were really nice. That was key.”
At Reed Talent Solutions, we combine a strong emphasis on corporate responsibility and a desire to provide social impact, with sustainability and philanthropy. Find our more here.
