Green entrepreneurs turn challenges into opportunities

This week one of our restaurant contracts held a ‘green week’, with eye-catching displays of all the ‘green’ things we do. Daily events have included cycling to power your milkshake or smoothie maker, guest chefs, fair trade coffee tasting and lots, lots more. It’s interesting to see that customers and the catering manager were inspired to turn our mandatory annual event into a week long feast. Our team went far beyond what was expected and customer’s response shows the drive for change is driven by customers pushing upwards rather than being enforced from above. This is no longer the domain of the person seen as a solitary tree-hugger, everyone is engaged. And as these photos show, much fun was had.

CSR is at the heart of our business

Green and CSR issues are now at the forefront when we are discussing new business opportunities- and rightly so. These discussions are no longer a superficial ‘tick box’ exercise but a detailed conversation about the breadth and depth of what we do including our targets, progress and the results we have achieved.

Measuring impact to get results

We are great believers in ‘what gets measured gets done’ and measuring our impact is a great way to motivate. Recently we decided to change our bottled water supplier to sponsor a different charity because we could achieve a greater impact. If we didn’t monitor this, we wouldn’t have known. We will now be providing significantly more water pumps for Africa, this measurably gives more power to the people – ours and the African communities who will benefit enormously.

I see big changes in mindsets; giving something back is becoming more entwined with our daily lives. It’s all about the little things we can do; especially those that reduce our negative impact on the environment and make a positive difference to individual’s lives.

This is definitely a man who believes that. Inspirational in serving an economic propel with a green issue – you just can’t say no to something like that.

Wendy Bartlett
Managing Director