Tuesday 18th February saw The Future Economy Network run a business breakfast at their former offices, the vibrant environment CREATE Centre, kindly hosted by Network members Resource Futures. Sustainability Success Stories was well attended by different businesses and individuals looking to find inspiration in successful cases of sustainable business change. Network members Water2Business kindly sponsored the event, who offer water and wastewater management that will help UK businesses improve efficiency and make savings.
Katherine Piper, Director of The Future Economy Network welcomed attendees, highlighting the benefits of subscribing to the Network and also sharing exciting updates about The Future Economy Network’s Carbon Neutral Hub in Bristol, Future Leap. Katherine also briefly ran through the plans for The Festival of Sustainable Business, where you can check out the video here.
First up, we welcomed Jennifer Best, Director of Poco Tapas Bar, who explained how their restaurant was born out of the festival circuit, meeting others who had a common passion – creating food that puts quality back into the soil. The friends had little business expertise, but their determination led to not only a sustainably successful business, but one that was also regenerative. In 2013 Poco Tapas won the “best ethical restaurant” by Ethical Garden Awards, and alongside many other awards they are now in the hall of fame for their consistent sustainable methods. Jennifer painted a picture of the “front of house” business, helping the audience imagine their experience at the restaurant and how every aspect has been made as ethical as possible. This ranged from circular methods to carbon saving gin and tonics, and from self-regenerative seafoods to grains promoting biodiversity. Jennifer then took the audience through the background of the business. This focused on sourcing (such as local and organic policies), environment (such as landfill use and carbon negative processes) and community (such as staff wellbeing).
Next, we welcomed Andy Coates, Chief Operating Officer at Water2Business, who kindly sponsored the event. Andy talked to the audience about water, or more specifically, the waste of water. He explained that the water market was deregulated two years ago, much like our electricity and gas, and that fresh water is running out in the most unlikely of cities (London for example). The Global Impact Report shows that the water crisis is the 5th most important impact on the planet, and it is immensely under spoken about. Andy showed success stories of Water2Business working with companies to reduce their water use/water waste, such as Avon Fire and Rescue Service, Shellbay and Haven Hotel. On average, one person uses 143 litres of water a day, and the UK loses 3170 million litres of water a day to water leakage. These staggering figures left Andy to emphasise the importance of businesses needing to look at their water waste – everyone talks about carbon and energy, but no one talks about water…yet.
We then welcomed Emma Burlow to speak, Head of Circular Economy at Resource Futures, who kindly hosted the event. With the IPCC report showing that products make up 45% of what we need to do to minimise global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, Emma highlighted the stress many businesses face to leap from traditional business models to circular ones. However, many businesses already have circular systems in place, such as repairing, maintenance, leasing and renting products to maintain value from the same products over and over again. She advised businesses to start with what you already know, and look at your enablers instead of seeing barriers. If you are critiqued, these comments are showing you where your pain points are – what do your customers want from you? Emma used examples from Waitrose, Mathias and Sons, Beko and Globechain, and highlighted her twitter trend “#CE100” to show easy examples of circular business systems we don’t think about. She finished her presentation by imploring the businesses in the room to make the change – “leaders follow leaders” - and stressed the importance of networks such as The Future Economy Network to help publicise these changes.
Finally, Abigal Warren, Client Services Manager at Ecosurety, highlighted their success stories. As a business-to-business environmental consultancy, their team had a passion that led them to take their first big risk for sustainability – creating a consumer behaviour campaign titled “#bringbackheavymetal”. This campaign, in partnership with Hubbub, was in response to the lack of battery recycling taking place, but was a huge risk as it was business-to-client and had no immediate return on investment. The campaign was successful and Ecosurety now run two campaigns a year with Hubbub, and these campaigns led to multinational companies becoming Ecosurety clients, such as Danone, Heinz, Nestle and McDonalds. Abigail spoke of “The Golden Circle”, and how your business’ story needs to be about the why if you want to be a sustainability success. Their why attracted new members of staff with similar sustainable ethics, and led to sustainable work methods such as flexi-time, work at home days, and the abolishment of dress codes. Abigail’s three main takeaways were find your why, don’t be afraid to take risks, and take your team on the journey.
The seminar finished with some insightful questions to the panel. There were 60 second pitches from It’s a Shovel, The Future Economy Network’s Carbon Neutrality workshop, Isometrica, Canopy & Stars, and Future Leap. The event concluded with some valuable networking and finishing up the pastries and refreshments. A huge thank you to Resource Futures for hosting the event and Water2Business for sponsoring; without this support we would not be able to do these wonderful inspiring events.