BUSINESS
Why getting ahead of the green curve can be good for both the
environment and business Darrel Birkett, managing director of Cool Designs explains how the company came to be the fi rst air conditioning supplier in the UK to become a carbon neutral business.
T
he recent Extinction Rebellion demonstrations in London shone a spotlight on the growing public concern over the continuing harm of man’s activities
on the environment.
It was particularly potent as it was not just a handful of so-called eco-warriors on the fringes. There were thousands of ordinary people and families, all of whom could have found other things to do on a sunny Easter Bank Holiday. They chose instead to take to the streets to draw attention to what is now being seen as a crisis of planetary proportions. Children and young people have played an important role in championing this cause, and rightly so, as it will be for future generations to address the problems our own and preceding generations have created. Our industry has been in the fi ring line on environmental responsibility for some time. While the CFC and HCFC problem has been solved, at least in developed countries, we are still wrestling with HFC refrigerants and their associated global warming implications.
There is a human tendency, perfectly understandable on one level, only to grasp the nettle and take action to address a problem when we are forced to do so, either through mandatory legislation or looming catastrophe. Change can be costly for businesses, and those fi rst to move often have to shoulder the risks and solve problems without any guarantee of any return or benefi t.
4 June 2019
This was very much the situation back in 2010, when, as a relatively young but growing air conditioning supplier, we took the decision to become a carbon neutral business. At this stage, as far as I am aware, no other air conditioning supplier in the UK had contemplated undertaking this process. Indeed, at the time few major blue chip companies had committed themselves to such a root and branch change in the way they operated. In the language of pioneers, it was virgin territory and we were breaking ground. The decision to go carbon neutral was based on my own instinct that the environment in general, and the carbon issue in particular, was set to become one of the defi ning issues of our age, with implications for how we all live and do business.
The challenge was to do ‘the right thing’ for the environment by taking our responsibilities as a supplier of global warming products seriously, and ensure the business could hold its head up by taking an ethical stance which off set the potential harm of our activities to the planet. We decided to undertake our carbon neutral journey with The Carbon Neutral Company, one of the leaders in the fi eld whose validation and quality assurance processes are respected globally.
We believed it would put the business in the best possible place in the new reality we were operating in, both in terms of our own ethical position as a company, and also position
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