Roundtable Discussion on Business Growth Opportunities from the Green Economy
Business, Professional Services, Manufacturing & Technology
After short presentations by panelists representing four small businesses, most of them based locally, a fruitful discussion followed, facilitated by Andrew Wooldridge, Chair of Kingston Business Forum.
Will Todd, founder and Managing Director of Carbon Architecture, talked about the business opportunity provided by transitioning to net zero and how this could be achieved in a commercially viable way. Will talked about the journey of one of their clients, a UK pub chain of 250 pubs, to address the challenge of becoming net zero. First of all, the meaning of ‘net zero’ is not clear to businesses and this becomes more complex due to different definitions which exist. Therefore, their approach was to break down the route to net zero into steps and make it clearer. The first question that businesses have is how to transition to net zero, while at the same time remaining productive and with staff turnover not affected. After finding the optimum route to net zero, they set a target to reduce energy consumption by 10% or above in a short period of time and then embed savings for the long term and maintain or improve a high level of guest comfort. This was approached by combining technological improvements with behaviour change. This helped the businesses to understand the source of their carbon footprint, by providing the necessary staff training and awarding a Green Mark environmental certificate, when the targets had been met. An important role is played by the analytics technology, which allows businesses to monitor their performance and helps them to decarbonise. This particular business reduced the energy consumption by 17% within 9 months, which translated to significant financial savings for them and helped them to set the goal to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2035. This will deliver to them around £5 millions savings in energy costs and 5,300 tonnes of carbon savings per year.
Sophie Walker, co-founder and CEO of Dsposal talked about how she turns rubbish into resources by using open data and innovation and how they empower people and organisations to make better decisions about their waste through digitalisation and data.
The material running through our economy should be treated as resources. Providing the appropriate tools and knowledge to people will enable them to know where their waste turns up. If the waste is treated appropriately it could become an asset, a resource and not a burden. This is the door to a more circular economy and opens up opportunities for new businesses to embrace the sharing economy and redesign, reuse and repair. Resource efficiency has the potential to cut our carbon budget. We need to collect data about waste, understand how much is there, what it is, and where it is. Currently as a country we do not have this data. The digital system makes it easier to gather and analyse data and develop software, and it is vital for the transition to a more circular economy to have an open infrastructure. They build the data foundation to enable the transition. It helps local authorities to communicate with their residents and businesses and reduce waste.
Dsposal developed a waste thesaurus to help classify their waste because passive compliance makes it easier for everyone to do the right thing.
According to an EU report published in March 2021 the illegal market for waste in the UK is 2.6 billion euros and 64% of the UK’s hazardous waste disappears. We do not know what happens to it. Therefore, Dsposal builds software to make it easier to be compliant and keep waste out of the hands of the legal operators.
Sophie recently won a Women’s Innovation Award from Innovate UK for a project they are doing to improve waste management in an NHS Trust.
Michelle Peters, Founder and Director of Paragon Office Cleaning , talked about delivering environmentally sustainable cleaning services, her journey and how the demand for their services is growing. More and more people understand that using eco responsible cleaning products is Important for our health and wellbeing and not only for our planet. Part of Paragon’s job is to raise awareness about topics such as problems from use of plastic. Michelle noted that most businesses are not aware that the Defra website provides guidance on how to offer sustainable cleaning for your business and the impact on carbon reduction through recycling.
David Randall, who runs two co-working spaces, Canbury Works and Maple Works, highlighted the importance of shared workspace in a green economy and the increased demand for this. The two workspaces are currently serving 150 people i.e. 52 businesses and he is in conversation with the Kingston Riverside project and a new start-up, called Bohan, regarding establishment of additional co-working space.
David is also Co-Chair of the Cooperative Crystalisr, an emerging platform for small businesses to connect with big businesses in the South London area. This has been identified as a route to community wealth building and social value. It is a way to de-risk participation of small businesses, helping them to scale up, to find funding, and to be involved with the green economy.
Supply chain is crucial in getting small businesses which provide environmentally sustainable products or services off the ground. Crystalisr aims to develop strategies to open up supply chains for small businesses by connecting them to local anchor institutions and channeling more contracts to local businesses.
Some of the questions David explored include: Where are the actual opportunities for small businesses? Which of these are labour intensive and which are non-labour intensive? Who is going to benefit in the UK from the green economy? How could we use community wealth building and social value to support people who do not have the high level qualifications and the right skills for a green economy e.g. people who lost their jobs in the retail sector? David highlighted the importance of collaborative networks in transition to a green economy.