DEBATE ESG STRATEGY
IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
We are
Want reduc spend
The
sefirst.com partne
PRESENT:
Rupert Gatty Coolkit
Celia Gaze Wellbeing Farm Paula Gill
Northwest Aerospace Alliance Ian Jones
Backhouse Jones Anthony Mayall
Sustainable Energy First Philip Richards
Sustainable Energy First Debbie Salmon
Graham Engineering John Paul Toher
Workhouse Creative Agency DRIVING THE ESG AGENDA
There are many things leading ESG strategies. Some are legislative, many are about doing and being seen to do ‘the right things’. With Sustainable Energy First, we gathered a cross-sector panel to their Lytham St Anne’s offices to probe ESG motivations and experiences
What does net zero mean to you and to your business and how do you prioritise it?
PR: It requires us as businesses, individuals, government and NGOs, to act together, everyone doing their part to reduce their own carbon emissions on a day-to-day basis.
As a business we need to support our customers in their journeys to net zero, and we need to do that ourselves. We’re looking at making our own electricity for this office, we use no gas at all, and we’re looking at that electricity being procured through renewable sources.
The push comes from different places. Larger corporates tend to be driven by government, so there are a lot more mandatory reporting requirements and frameworks, but for SMEs I think it’s about wanting to do the right thing.
RG: For me, it’s part of a broader ESG agenda, reducing your carbon emissions, your carbon footprint, pursuant to the Paris Agreement. We consider Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. Scope 1 and Scope 2 deals with stuff you combust yourself and combusted elsewhere on your behalf. Scope 3 is more difficult because it’s all to do with your value chain, looking at buyers and their own commitments to reduce their emissions, and that’s difficult to manage without their full collaboration.
For us, the agenda is in the ascendancy of decision-making processes around our customer base, and unless we really get a
highly polished ESG agenda that we can prove has tangibility and credibility, then we might find ourselves excluded from buying decisions that would otherwise be in our favour.
DS: The obvious point is it’s helping with our bottom line, but I think, more importantly, it is maintaining that edge in the markets that we’re in. We don’t want to be left behind, so we need to be striving to be in front. It’s also about attracting investment - if you haven’t got the right credentials environmentally you can be turned away for finance.
Those that joined the
business because we are selling ourselves as a
sustainable business will hold us to account, and I like that a lot
Business reputation is important too and when we’re tendering for work now it forms a large part of the process, so we need to stay ahead of that to win the big contracts that we’re working hard to get.
JPT: It’s been on our agenda for the last few years and we see it as good business. We started the journey towards B Corp, we chose
that as a framework and a guiding star because it felt like the best one out there and we started around 18 months ago.
We did it for a few reasons. We’ve got commercial pressures, because we’re dealing with clients who have an expectation of us and we’ve got to answer that. It’s also a major recruitment factor and not just for the 20-year- olds now, it’s across the board.
CG: It’s our way of doing our part to save the planet. Installing a wind turbine 12 years ago at the farm was the best thing I ever did, and that became a beacon of sustainability. I achieved B Corp status – an accreditation for better business practice - in nine months, but it really was the end of a ten-year journey.
Every single thing we do is filtered through a sustainability lens, from the chef purchasing milk, to having seven different bins for waste. It encourages all the staff to have sustainability at the heart of everything we do.
Achieving B Corp was my lockdown project, it got me sane, it was probably the best thing I did, not knowing, post-lockdown, that this sustainability would just explode and for us, we are seeing massive benefits. During lockdown we formed a corporate arm to our wedding and events venue, and since then people are booking from all over the country, coming to us just because of the B Corp status.
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