Up bright and early for a breakfast session hosted by the UK Ambassador, Fiona Clouder, at her residence, with people from the mining and retail industries, and a number of others. Very engaged discussion.
Then Fernando and I drove across town to the Recycla recycling site, where it all started. A prototypical triple bottom line operation, with a clear environmental benefit, a workforce partly made up of former prison inmates, and a financial bottom line which, though precarious at times, is largely funded by corporate CSR budgets.
To get the business onto a truly sustainable financial footing, Chile would need to adopt its own version of the EU Extended Producer Liability framework, to ensure that those who made products took responsibility from cradle to grave.
Next port of call was the Ibáñez Atkinson Foundation, where the lunch was co-hosted by Felipe Ibáñez and his wife Heather (née Atkinson) and members of their family.
It all started with a small tragedy, in terms of the size of the victim. As I walked in, I espied a brilliant red model of a DH88 De Havilland Comet, one of my favourite aircraft of all time.
When I asked about it, Felipe took me through to see it. Picked up, it was dropped (happily not by me), and at least one propellor came adrift.
When we looked at the plaque on the model’s base, it turned out that it was the plane flown by one of Felipe’s forebears, C.W.A. Scott – winner of the London to Sydney Air Race, the “the world’s greatest air race,” in 1934.
Scott flew a DH88 named ‘Grosvenor House,’ as is – by no means coincidentally – the model plane we partially crashed.
A fascinating glimpse into a very different part of Chilean society – and a wonderful lunch. We would meet Felipe and Heather later in the day at the Awards ceremony, though that is the subject of the next blog.
And then, after the lunch we headed across to Recycápolis Central to meet another part of the team – and to engage in another book signing session. wonderful people, great buzz.
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