After spending a day meeting local school children at Get up to Speed - a business showcase event organised by The work-wise Foundation held at Magna - unLTD Business heard from Lisa Pogson, MD at Airmaster, about her takeaways from the day and how she became re-energised about being more sustainable.
The STEM event focused on school children, had everything from underwater seals and 3D printers, to scale models of small scale nuclear reactors and the vast building even had a spitfire and a McLaren; the theme was around sustainability. There was plenty of energy in the room, with over 5,000 attending on the day.
It started with a business breakfast alongside many colleagues from across South Yorkshire, discussing how sustainability is chief among many customer requirements these days but can sometimes feels like we are just ticking a box. We are not, this is real! It gave me all that I needed to reenergise my thinking around this theme.
I reflected that, as SMEs, we can all make a difference. It is the small things as well as the big focus on Net Zero targets that count. Looking at lifecycles of equipment is an important consideration when selling or purchasing. How we have seen individuals make a difference, in the rise against single use plastics as basic as our everyday shopping with ‘bags for life’ and reusing containers, instead of disposal. I would love to meet David Attenborough and say ‘Thank You’ for pushing this!
Over 20 years ago, part of my studies around management of resources were focused on sustainability. Many small businesses I speak to, with only a few employees, think that they can’t have an impact and really don’t need a plan of how they can help. Always focused on the next big thing, the next project, who the next target customer should be. We are all the same. There are over 5.5 million small businesses in the UK, making up around half the turnover of UK business as a whole. We need to get onboard with this.
Years ago we started working with what was then the Green Business Club at the local Chamber of Commerce. The HVAC industry was cleaning up its act and we got a diagnostic on what else we could do. We started focusing on waste, whether it was recycling or what we did with our gases. It was ll about little wins, from focusing on fuel use through a member of staff doing ISO14001 environmental training.
Recently I have been asked to be included in a debate with the IOR about whether it is important to ‘Spend money on Energy Efficient Design or Service in Refrigeration’. This is once again about going back to the small things too. I often compare servicing of a vehicle to our equipment. If you buy the fanciest car in the world, with all mod cons, you will need to keep it serviced and maintained to a decent standard too. Everything has a life cycle and sometimes things can go wrong before that, but often, they will last longer if they are looked after.
At a recent Rotherham Business Growth Board we discussed how the people right at the end of our supply chains, if included in discussions and design processes, can have a positive effect on price and materials, often by 10-20%. So, let’s all think about how we can include more people in the discussions, wherever possible, and make those financial and sustainable gains, no matter how small!
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