FOCUS FEATURE
SUSTAINABILITY IN ACTION
How sustainability can bring a boost to your bottom line
The Chamber’s Sustainable East Midlands campaign was developed following research conducted alongside the University of Derby, which highlights a growing engagement in the low-carbon agenda but a gap in knowledge about accessing support. Dan Robinson explores these trends and finds out how some firms are already turning sustainability into a business opportunity.
suggest we may be edging in the right direction. The group brings together SMEs across Derbyshire and
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Nottinghamshire so they can collaborate on meeting the sustainability demands of larger organisations. He reels off examples of businesses that are beginning to
sell what he terms low-carbon and pro-environmental goods and services as part of their wider offer. There is a car leasing firm that now has more electric and
hybrid vehicles in its fleet; a business recycling computer batteries to make car batteries; and an electrical sales company that’s added LED bulbs to its stock alongside its bread-and-butter of washing machines and the like. “Another company supplies data cabling but it can work
out which rooms in buildings are occupied, so it’s turned into a building management efficiency outfit,” he explains. “So we can see there are more and more businesses
doing something in sustainability without having to change their entire model.” In his day job as an associate professor at the University
of Derby, Dr Paterson is responsible for research at Derby Business School that focuses on the skills and qualities required for businesses to lead the transition to a sustainable future. The UK’s six million businesses are responsible for about
18% of the country’s carbon emissions. Given that 99% of these are SMEs, employing fewer than 50 people, he’s clear on where the priorities lie. He adds: “In the effort to shift our economy, we know we
need to engage smaller businesses in the whole sustainability agenda. We also know that corporates in the past two decades have been further ahead in that agenda due to the increasing awareness of corporate social responsibility, governance and legislation. “Small businesses in general have lagged behind – partly
because they don’t have the time or knowledge and partly because they don’t have the capacity to keep their eye on the latest developments in the circular economy, for example, because they’re busy keeping the business afloat.”
DR PATERSON IS aware it all begins at the bottom line for small businesses. While joining the sustainability agenda has many environmental, reputational and idealistic benefits, it must first present financial and business opportunities. Identifying this, he has also been the project lead for the
DE-Carbonise business project, a European Regional Development Fund-backed scheme that is working with two cohorts of SMEs to decarbonise their operations and develop sustainable supply chains via small grants for R&D and business development.
54 business network November 2020 “Knowing that small businesses are looking at the
bottom line first – whether it’s energy efficiency improvements or reducing costs – is the obvious starting point,” says Dr Paterson. “However, as this agenda speeds up – and it is speeding
up – more businesses need to create products and services that address sustainability issues, whether they are kinder to the environment, use fewer resources or proactively do positive things for their community. All this is ramping up and, therefore, it’s important to support these businesses.” This is the context behind why the University of Derby
has partnered with the Chamber to gather intelligence about the level of engagement in the sustainability agenda among East Midlands businesses via the Quarterly Economic Survey over the past five years. In February, the university added questions to the Q1
survey – which explores a range of business interests to gauge the state of the East Midlands economy – related to awareness and engagement with clean growth. Some 250 companies answered these extra questions
out of 406 total respondents so it was presumed, for the purposes of the results, that the 38% who didn’t take part were not engaged. One of the headline findings was that the proportion of
businesses deriving turnover from low-carbon and pro- environmental goods and services has grown from 16% in 2015 to 31% in 2020. These included anything from environmental consultancy
and waste recovery services to specialists in renewable electricity generation, energy efficiency and low-emission transport. About six in 10 of the firms within this 31% (of the 406 respondents) bracket said up to a fifth of their turnover was from sustainable products and services, meaning it’s still not a major part of most business models. But Dr Paterson is still encouraged by the findings, saying: “These companies aren’t just being energy-efficient
Helen Taylor
r Fred Paterson is a man who sits in many seats within the region’s sustainable business community, but it’s as leader of the Low Carbon Business Network where he has witnessed the subtle real-world changes that
Dr Fred Paterson
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