[169] How Green is Your Money? With Dan Sherrard-Smith from MotherTree

A Sustainable Life with Jen Gale

In this episode we’re talking money, and how we can make our money a bit greener.
I’m chatting to Dan Sherrard-Smith, who is the founder and CEO of MotherTree – a platform that helps us all to get better informed about the impact of our money when it’s in our current accounts, savings, and pensions, and even when it comes to things like mortgages, insurance and broadband too.
We’ve got a few episodes in the archive diving into money, and I’ve linked to them below if you want to go back and have a listen, so I felt like I was pretty on top of all things green money, but I hadn’t even considered things like insurance, and had firmly put ‘mortgage’ into the 'too hard' box! It was a real eye opener to chat to Dan about what they’re doing at MotherTree to help individuals, but also the work that they’re doing with businesses to not only help them to make their business accounts and investments greener, but to help them help their employees too.
Do go and check out the website , there’s so much on there, including a money carbon calculator where you can fill in a few details and get an idea of the carbon impact of your financial choices!
Also, I was listening back to this episode to edit it, and realised that we spent at least the first fifteen minutes talking about talking about climate change, rather than money stuff. I hope you find it as interesting as I did, hearing about how Dan went about setting up MotherTree and the hugely important role that having climacte conversations played in that. As well as all of the juicy money stuff, I would love one of the takeaways from this episode to be us all trying to be a bit braver and have a few more climate conversations – there's a super helpful video here that I use during Carbon Literacy training – let me know if it’s helpful!

Dan Sherrard-Smith - CEO and founder of MotherTree

GOOD NEWS!
In the new Good News section after the main interview, I share some of the good climate news happening (because there is some, I promise!). Here's this weeks pick:

• Stockholm to ban petrol and diesel cars from centre from 2025 (The Guardian)
• Hull approves a 'right to grow' scheme (Positive News)
• In The Sustainable(ish) Clubhouse we had a thread sharing the joy that comes with so many of the changes we make to our lives to live more sustainably.
  Ruth said “The more I live out my values, the better I feel about myself." And went on to talk about the buzz she gets from cycling, the warm glow from spending money at ethical businesses, and the 'free pass' she feels she has when buying secondhand clothes.
  And Julia said "I love hanging the washing out on a sunny day, finding a book I wanted to read in the library or second hand, having chats with the lovely ladies in the farm shop, knowing that I'm making things a little bit better just buy shopping in a small local shop"
  

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LISTEN...

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USEFUL LINKS:

• MotherTree
  - Website
  - Facebook
  - Twitter/X
  - Linked In
  - Climate Challenge
  - Money Carbon Calculator
  - Bank League Table
  - Green Living Service
  - Business service
• Dan Sherrard-Smith on Linked In
• Look After My Bills
• Talking About Climate Change - Video
• [015] - Money as a Force for Good with Triodos - podcast
• [013] - Be Good and Do Good with Your Money - podcast
• [091] - Make My Pension Matter with Make My Money Matter - podcast
• Ecosia
• UK government pension tracing service
• Naturesave
  
• Carbon Literacy training
• The Sustainable(ish) Clubhouse

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What were your takeaways from this episode? Any lightbulb moments?
What are you going to go out and DO as a result of this episode?
What are your moments of joy that living more sustainably brings?
Do share in a comment below!

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