Sustainable Development Business Summit (Midlands)

Here follows a report from the BCSD-UK Sustainable Development Business Summit (Midlands) from the 30th November 2006, complete with audio downloads.

To listen to the audio, click on the underlined name of the speaker in the report below and this will open Windows Media Player and play the tracks automatically.

Jeff Tetlow, Chairman, BCSD-UK

Welcome and introduction to BCSD-UK.

Gary Booton, Director of Health, Safety and Environment, EEF

David Middleton, CEO, BCSD-UK

Dr. Stewart Davies, Business Commissioner, Sustainable Development Commission

Enabling business to engage more effectively with government is the trick to pull to allow SD to go faster.
Living within the constrained resources on one planet.
Sustainable development means transformation.
Stern and transformation.
Stern calls for 2015 action. What we do in next 10 to 15 years will have huge reaction on our children and their children in 2^nd half of this century.
Earlier we can take action the better in terms of cost effectiveness.
Little strong evidence of decoupling of our environmental impact from economic growth.
Need to be more ambitious.
Stern – business opportunities.
Low carbon high efficiency goods – analysis sector by sector.
Homes, food we eat, getting around, holiday travel have biggest impact. Sector by sector highest impact – in terms of power generation wind energy in mid-range.
Stern identifies carbon price. Before the highest acceptable carbon figure was from DEFRA at £35 per tonne of carbon. Stern talks of £165 per tonne.
Removing barriers to behavioural change on energy efficiency.
Role of government in policy direction – kind of interventions – government as procurer – regulatory measures – need for holistic approach by business.

Ian Pearson MP, Minister of State for Climate Change & Environment

UK as world’s first industrialised nation has a moral role.
Government does have lead role to play.
Challenges we need to achieve are massive.
Moving towards one planet living.
Accelerating pressures on our resources. Shifting CO2 emissions from a factory in Birmingham to Beijing doesn’t make any difference to the environmental problem.
We need to help China and India grow in a more environmentally friendly way than we went through our industrial revolution.
Can’t preach ecological prudence whilst being profligate.
Manufacturing industry could still save £2 to 3 billion a year.
Examples of how regulations have driven change.
New targets.
SD - right thing to do for your business as well as the planet.

Ralph Hepworth, Business Development Manager, Environmental Technologies Cluster, AWM

John Barraclough, West Midlands Regional Manager, Envirowise

Reported what’s been happening in West Midlands.
Investigating and promoting eco-design, market opportunities, understanding new regs, and resource efficiency.
RECs – very positive response with 15 in region.
500 jobs secured or saved over three years.
100000 tonnes diverted from landfill.
New business and costs savings = £50/60m (almost certainly an understatement).
Waste processing plant at Ludlow – case study.

Jacqueline Coté, Senior Advisor, Advocacy and Partnerships, World Business Council for Sustainable Development

Hot topics – globalisation – energy and climate – China and India.
Water will be upcoming subject – ageing population – move of people to cities.
Poverty still increasing.
Lack of trust in business – role of media – financial markets.
Globalisation – growing gap between rich and poor. Feeling of winners and losers.
Energy and climate – on agenda for long time to come.
Common themes – technology most important part of spectrum. Energy efficiency – clean coal solutions – carbon capture – nuclear – bio-fuels – renewables – industry sector approach across borders.
China and India - 2/5ths of world’s population and fastest growing.
Bruntland – probably read more today than 20 years ago.
Weak capacities of governments to influence situation.
Link between business and society. Is your business model robust enough to cope with SD? Is your brand and reputation at risk?
We see growing tension within business community – winners and losers – and great differences in levels of response.
See few helpful signals from government but business itself giving mixed signals to governments.
Two agendas you face – how better to manage your risk and how to capitalise on opportunities.
Ability to apprehend this public policy agenda is critical to business going forward.
The major contribution will come through core business and not through philanthropic activity.
Business in very strong position to influence the agenda.
More business involvement.

Focus Subject: Business Management Systems

Clive Austen, Environmental Health & Safety Manager, Coors Brewers Ltd

History of brewing in Burton on Trent.
Maybe sustainable development is not as new a subject as you think it is.
Is SD rocket science – I don’t think so.
Coors – 5^th largest brewer in the world.
Why Burton – water – every brewery in the world “Burtonises water” – adding of gypsum – canal and railways communications – central to UK and its markets.
Burton - largest brewing town in UK and centre of brewing in Europe. Other businesses developed around us – suppliers and others.
We are largest employer in Burton - many community links.
Is this a classic example of SD from the 18th century - symbiotic businesses, local employment – maintain social well-being.
ISO 14001 and ISO 9000 for many years.
2 UK plants are world class.
Reduced energy consumption by 3% year on year for last 10 years and that really does mean money.
Reduced water and waste water impacts by 40% over last 15 years.
Work done with WRAP.
Good environmental practice cannot be decoupled from money. If you don’t do it, you won’t make it.
If you are not in environmental and sustainable development market place and not using the techniques you will not survive in years to come.
Do you want to be an environmental champion or an environmental pariah?
Do you want poor environmental practice or ignorance to damage your brands? Brands are King in this country.

Panellists: Clive Austen; Dr. Paul Brooks, Director Environment, CORUS Technology; Andy Whyle, Environment Officer, Ricoh UK Products Ltd

Stewart - How can business management systems lock in SD into the lifeblood of the business?
Paul – not a short term thing. Every good manager I know relies on good management system. It’s fundamental to our drive on energy management and CO reductions.
Andy – Group Standards get fed to us and environmental standards are built into that. We have a zero waste to landfill programme. We now make money from waste.
Clive - We are now part of the Carbon Disclosure project. UK brewing industry over last 5 years saved UK 180,000 tonnes of CO2 throughout industry. I do not have a problem with good regulation.
Paul - Commission rejected majority national allocation plans that were submitted so far and asked for significant cuts in allocation levels but not so for UK but our UK leading position was accepted and that helps level the European playing field. Now needs to be truly international playing field.
Andy - RECs very good. More and more becoming the SMEs who meet in the Club to swap info. WEEE and RHOS workshops particularly effective.
Clive – done all we can on current technologies. Carbon costs could change that. My plea is we need creative technology to make a difference.
Andy - more and more demand for our recycling activity. Reconditioning now major part of our business and business strategy.
Paul - use The Carbon Trust as extensively as possible. Concern is the limit to £20,000 a year and we hope those constraints will be looked at. We are doing joint venture with TUC and our employees and The Carbon Trust on energy saving.

Focus Subject: Construction

Prof. George Fleming, Managing Director, EnviroCentre Ltd

I have a lot of problems with bad interpretation of good regulation.
I’m interested in Policy but I’m more interested in how to solve problems.
Environment is in domination. Have fantastic legislation. Lot more to come out. Lot of Policy drivers.
Restriction and facilitation. Regulators can apply regulation in a restricted manner and not a facilitating manner. Regulator is supposed to do both and find that balance. But when the regulator runs to the courts to develop case law that then creates constrictions and barriers that constrain taking forward the effective implementation of the regulation. When that happens they are not facilitating anything.
The definition of waste is a fine example. As soon as you run to case law you are failing in the process of facilitating the implementation of good regulation. The definition of waste is simply creating a barrier to recycling.
Castle Cement was the first case law where they used solvents as a fuel for their kilns. Wasn’t causing pollution and was creating a beneficial effect. So why go and demand case law and more power to the regulator rather than the person trying to create new markets.
Landfill tax been great boost to the reduction of material going to landfill. I would like to see tax at £80 a tonne not £35 which is current target. Ask this government not to be coy but to use landfill tax raised to be much more effective in creating markets for recycled materials and come face to face with the definition of waste. And let’s not call materials waste but a useful material.
Concept of carbon capture – carbon is a waste under definition. How do we manage this waste?
Case study – Port of Tyne.
Case study – nuclear waste.
Case study – Glasgow - £3b Glasgow Harbour infrastructure regeneration.

Panellists: Prof. George Fleming; John Garbutt, Marketing Director, Kingspan Insulation Ltd; Iain Walpole, Environment Manager, Castle Cement Ltd; Aldred Drummond, Bee Bee Developments Ltd

John – accused the Minister of picking his numbers very carefully. Took double hit on some figures. He expected his sales to grow 50% in next 2 years.
Aldred – sometimes eco-designs too radical for public sector partners. We have 3500 acres of greenfield development-involving programme of pre-planting and landscaping and various ways of reducing use of energy. It’s about trying to fit what you are developing and reduce environmental footprint long-term. Trying to persuade people not to leave site but live, work and play on site.
We have one of lowest public transport usages in England.
Create more sustainable communities.
Ian - been looking at energy efficiency in homes and whole life impacts - comparing concrete heavyweight building materials with timber frames etc.
Ian - as producers we’re all reducing our emissions by switching from fossil fuels to renewables. We’re using refuse derived materials – taking our waste from domestic chain and using as fuel and using more biomass.
George – by Oct 07 every construction leader’s waste management site plan will have resource efficiency and waste reduction central. Because of bad practice on site at the moment you could build another house from the waste created building 15 houses.
Delighted we won Olympics on SD ticket. But then we’ve thrown it out. Should use Olympics as an exemplar. Learn a lot. Sell on lessons. Olympics could be exemplar as to how UK manages construction.
John – brought Arup in to look at true holistic SD – inc social and natural resources and economic sides and caused us to re-think policies and strategies. It’s caused sea change on how we make our products. It provides our moral license to trade.
Aldred – being debated widely is how we can share land values in SD going forward –could inc local generation of power. Everything seems to go back to Treasury.

Focus Subject: Energy

John Hill, Offshore Wind Business Development Manager, Converteam Ltd

Energy fundamental by 2050.
Shifting values – in financial sense but also in personal values of European citizens.
We are seriously hooked on fossil fuel. There is plenty. 17% higher reserves than 10 yrs ago. Production gone up. Gas and coal still lots around. But main reason is we don’t pay for everything we use.
The political risk. Paul Golby CEO of Eon in UK was asking if we knew where gas will come from by 2015. “1/3 will come from Russia. 20% from Iran – then I get over to really difficult countries”.
What’s the value per day as individuals that we can use in business. Stern gave us a number. Produce about 6 tonnes of CO2 in three bedroom house. 3.8 tonnes from car use. Adds up to about £500 for each tax paying individual.
One day we will have fusion.
Target 10% from renewables by 2010.
We already have enough wave power to power the whole of the country.
Biomass – can’t get enough fields close to power stations.
Solar – in theory 98% could come from solar and will get cheap one day.
Micro-renewables – wind turbines on micro scale not that great.
Hydro electric – run of river – but have to be environmentally very sensitive.
Got everything going right with Queen’s speech and Stern – we want independence and secure energy – we do love inventing things – we do R&D but don’t do deployment.
Got the most offshore experience in Europe and best offshore resources.
Where in the world is secure energy not the definition of a stable society?
Where in the world is it that it doesn’t create prosperity.

Panellists: John Hill; Dr. Chris Broadbent, Director, Wardell Armstrong LLP; Rory Tait, UK Head of Energy, Eversheds LLP; Richard Heathcote, Sustainable Development Manager Bulmers (part of Scottish & Newcastle UK Ltd)

Rory – we advise people on regulatory and legal issues – more and more on renewables - coming up against lots of barriers – plethora of regulations and legislation keeps changing. Difficult for new entrants to energy industry.
Robin – we look at environmental impacts of new developments ie wind or tidal – and get packages through planning. We also do overseas work – India and China – lot of work in coal with CHP – and lot in carbon credits and make projects more economic.
Richard – brewers use lot of energy – energy efficiency keen driver. We work with Carbon Trust. Look to embed energy on site and whole concept of distributed energy where it is sensible to do so.
Richard - Herefordshire has 100,000 tonnes of wood chip biomass available if we managed the woodland in Hereford. But we don’t at the moment. Could run most of Hereford via managed woodland coppicing – where 2 or 3 acres on a farm that’s simply left at the moment to do its own thing could be coppiced and centrally fuelled and replanted.
Also produce lot of organic waste streams – apple pommice – high energy value – looking hard at CHP on site where we use our own by-product as a fuel. Can’t do it alone because of variable energy use – take off site electricity and heat – district heating.
Stewart – how could things go faster?

Rory – CHP embedded within communities – levers from central government to local government on energy targets. Must get everyone together. More and more projects on the drawing board. East London – Thames Gateway. Planning problems still, some areas better than others. Planned changes to ROCs a major headache.
John – Need Energy Bank of England that can make judgments – Carbon Committee could have power and appropriate targets to set - to work like Bank of England.
Robin – whole energy focus on renewables but over next 20 years we will be 60% reliant on fossil – need more development on clean coal – on carbon sequestration – carbon capture – opportunity for UK to lead.
Richard – recognition at corporate level that climate change is here - will have impact - need to adapt and mitigate. Embedding power and efficiency is all about mitigating . Adapting is recognising the increasing impacts on our raw materials. Water is 95% of our product. Need to look hard at our sources of raw materials.
Stewart – access to funding?

Rory – yes. Lots of green funds emerging. The City has bought into this. Companies who you wouldn’t expect. The challenge is finding projects.

Focus Subject: Finance and Investment

Jennie Price, Chief Executive, WRAP

Government funded organisation – not for profit – enable business and public to use materials more efficiently.
Stern has made CO2 dominant thing but protection of natural environment equally important.
Significant change. Was 11% rate in UK – now 27% - one of fastest growing countries in Europe in recycling – also in reducing material going to landfill. 90% houses covered by recycling facilities and 22m adults can be described as committed to recycling.
Translate recycling into CO2 if instead of landfill or incinerating – or in manufacturing if you use recycled material - total amount of saving is somewhere between 10 and 15 million tonnes of CO2. That’s the same as taking 3.5m cars off road every year.
Recycling sector worth £12b at moment - expected to expand to £20 to £30B in next 10 to 15 years. Solid growth projected.
Lots more people, institutions, investor companies starting to look at it as investment opportunity. Need strong legislative drivers – ROCs – signals of government continued priorities –such as European binding targets.
New technologies such as gasification; pyrolysis; different types of treating and processing waste.
Are seeing more demand for recycled materials.
What really gets investors going is the prospect of making money. Fact that there is a stream of revenue in gate fees or in what you are selling then outlooks for it is attractive.
Group of investors now looking for medium reliable return. But will need big scale. If you are looking for 1/2 million or a million will have a hard time. Over £5m they will get out of bed. If it’s over £10 they’re banging on your bedroom door. Must have replica ability. One-offs very difficult. If you’ve lots across the country – great.
Investors don’t like unstable markets.
Don’t like questionable or unproven technology.
Regulatory uncertainty gets them going too. Delays in the emergence of the details of the WEEE Directive for instance has caught a few people who have had their fingers badly burned by going in too early.
There’s lots of money out there at the moment – there is but only for highly profitable green technology. Not an area where virtue is its own reward.
WRAP helps enhance chance of accessing funds by adding expertise into bids etc and identifying areas of funding, helping on business plans and marketing etc.
Case study on Grolsch bottles.
Example of damage caused by bad market information and how WRAP tackles that.

Panellists: Jennie Price; Dr. Mark Payton, Senior Investment Manager and Head of Mercia Fund, West Midlands Enterprise Ltd; Barbara Hayes, Team Leader, Churches’ Industrial Group Birmingham

Mark – I manage a seed fund that seeds technology across the West Midlands.
Barbara – I am part of national church body that looks at CSR. The church is a significant shareholder.
Jennie – businesses feel that in this sector it’s essential to get all information right. Green funds not same as other investors. But there to take money. They do see growth potential.
Barbara – church not green funds. Not a venture capitalist but it invests in equities and properties. But put all church investments together it amounts to £9b.
Mark – we will not invest in anything that does not have a priority position – like patent protection. All about risk management. Quantifying and managing risk.
Legislation can dramatically impact on the market.
We come in at seed stage when we have a rough idea of the market – have an idea of the management need – clear idea of the technology and pattern. We will come in and invest up to ½ million in that. Take it to stage where a bigger investor will be interested.
I haven’t bought into green fund concept. A good idea is a good idea. We at the early stage in all this so shoulder bigger risk.
Jennie – RD&D – the Government can do better. Technology easy for government to fund when it’s blue sky research. Nearer it gets to market the harder it is to put government money in and it’s often then that help is so much needed. Don’t think Government does enough here.
Government also has a policy of not intervening – because of State Aid rules etc. We play by the rules far tougher than elsewhere and they are really getting in the way of developing some key areas of industry. UK should be at the lead of getting rid of some of those barriers. DTI in particular should be focusing on that. Lots of new technologies coming from France and Germany because their government willing to invest in them. We should be doing same.
Mark – yes – there is a place for government help. Hear government saying we should be innovating. But government should be innovating itself.

Focus Subject: Market Opportunities

Peter Braithwaite, Director, Arup

Talk more about business opportunities. Lot we can do to improve our businesses. Big issue is climate change. Echo what Jennie said that climate change – reducing carbon – does not equate to sustainability. SD is bigger than that.
Lots of different forms of energy systems are coming to market. Heading to a low carbon society – lots of opportunities for anyone in low carbon technologies – but also we can do a lot to reduce our emissions. Look at fabric of our buildings and how we do business.
Increasing sea levels – opportunity – protection.
How much water do we use - can we reduce it – can we recycle it.
Like to scrub word waste and use word resource. One man’s waste can be another’s resource but waste should designed out in beginning. Creating waste does not make economic sense.
Hate the word consumer. We’re all people. People don’t dictate demand markets – corporate marketing departments do.
Shareholders challenge what organisations do.
Very weak in global government – UN or US or EU – want to drive change but should be acting as enablers to allow big corporates to facilitate change.
Legislation shouldn’t stop people going beyond minimal standards.
Like to see big business lead change. Corporates got the ability to create change but not just for financial benefit but it’s the direction they go to achieve financial performance that’s so important. CSR is disappearing – good. But how many large corporates taking SD seriously?
Case study on Kingspan - produce insulation for construction industry. Largest in UK. Wanted to go from just being environmentally aware to totally sustainable. Covered environmental management systems; the environment in which they work; green transport plan; distribution; community involvement; purchasing; energy; land management; supply chain, waste, etc. In many areas they had good business principles but not formalised.
Looked at them all. Been organisational step change. SD not added on but embedded. Are saving on operational costs. Strengthened market place. Retaining staff. Futurescoping to 2020. All done within their existing budgets.

Panellists: Peter Braithwaite; Prof. Ian Oakes, Commercial Director, Technology Innovation Centre (A member of the UCE Birmingham Group) ; Simon Curtis, Director, Faber Maunsell / AECOM

Simon – director of FM and lead building section of company in Birmingham, specializing in engineering and design in buildings and have been working on lots of SD in buildings.
Ian – UCE in Birmingham and the Technology Innovation Centre. Collaborate on technical and knowledge transfer and environmental sector is one of key sectors.
Stewart - Transformation – what should we see?

Peter – kids not wanting a new mobile phone every two months. Not be dropping our quality of life – but changing it – move away from 80% of goods we buy we use once. Moving away from needing the best and newest. These things not talked about and not on government agenda. Extendable lifetime products – consumers don’t drive markets. Big business marketing departments do. Need to encourage big corporates not to be wanting to intro new brands for the sake of sales but goods with a longer lifespan and with corporates then moving into new sectors to fill gap in business plan.
Why do we think if we stop buying flowers from Kenya we shall be destroying an industry. The biggest problem for Africa is feeding itself. So why is there an industry that grows flowers to send to Europe rather than growing produce to sell locally?
Ian – see growing opportunities – in things like biofuels – fabricating etc and responding to climate change - flood defence systems £130m bought in from Europe – could have been supplied from West Midlands. So is connecting local businesses to these opportunities.
Simon – whole way we design and use buildings. 1960s and 70s buildings designed that would not last forever and we’re knocking a lot of them down already. Now designing-in flexibility of future use such as cinemas to warehouses; how we use energy; how we now get natural ventilation into offices – developments of whole sites as with Bee Bee is the way to go and will have dramatic change. Getting away from a commuting society. Car sharing has more impact on emissions than anything done on buildings.
Stewart – what the Minister said – Government Estate be carbon neutral by 2012?

Simon – is a major market opportunity. Tremendous amount to do. Keeping structures cool becoming more of a challenge – making all the building’s functions work together with the structure. Using things like biomass boilers. Biomass starting to take off. Boilers changing on three monthly basis. Other renewables too. On domestic side more efficiency in homes.
Peter – how is government going to measure what it does and what does it think zero carbon means?
Ian – reuse of vegetable oils in diesel fuel mix – community heating opportunities. Challenging government targets and complex solutions needed to achieve. Huge resource within universities that can help companies enter these markets – need to break down the barriers of academia and business working better together more.
Peter – always done SD but not called it that. Whole agenda gives Arup a lot of internal growth – such as working in China. Also our own performance. In last two years 40% of our staff been with us less than 2 years! Sign of growth!
Ian – we have attracted funding from AWM to help in areas where we are functioning. Availability of funding for new companies to look at new product opportunities and new markets is essential.

Focus Subject: Resource Efficiency

Peter Jones, Director, Biffa Waste Services Ltd

Talk to you about Biffa resource flow programme. What we see in future trends.
We send 9m tonnes of garbage every year to landfill. Don’t like doing it but only way we can stay in business.
260 landfill sites in the UK at the moment – 1500 cubic metres of space in this room. Every day every one of those landfill sites is taking the cubic volume of this room in waste – and this is waste that’s been compacted down until its really solid.
Landfill tax credit scheme came in and enables us to fund research into where this stuff came from. Very crudely, in the UK we’ve got about 600,000,000 million source drawn materials and about 600,000,000 tonnes of material coming in as an input to our industrial system. ½ minerals and rock; 1/3 fossil fuels then ferrous and non-ferrous materials and so on. Only 15% ends up going to landfill. So 260 x the size of this room about 70 million tonnes of the stuff going back to the front of the process as a raw material. If that 70 million has to grow to 2, 3, or 400 million tonnes, then as a waste company we are faced with the investment challenge in new technologies and to decide what sorts of kit we’ve got to buy. Much of this kit is expensive – its got 10 to 20 year life – so we need to break down into much greater detail the nature of these resource flows through the economy. That’s what we have done through BiffaWard.
Review of resource flow research – 65 studies.
Hydrogen is the kid on the block at the moment. If I was you I would be much more interested in nitrogen because there’s four times more of it and it goes into air, ground and water. If we think we have a CO2 problem, then nitrogen’s not far behind.
All 65 studies into mass balance are accessible on our web site. Its getting into the guts of the scale and size of the environmental economy. Template for industry to make investments. Fridges sited as a best case example of tracking waste but the reality is that because we don’t have a data tracking system for fridge destruction in this country we put £80 million subsidies into local authorities to fund their recovery costs for fridges but we can still only account for about 40% of the cfc flows from the old style fridges that we’re scrapping. So we’re spending £80m and only solving 1/3 of the problem.
We are running a waste economy not a production economy.
Biffa will have to become a resource management company.
Our industry should be brought within a framework of a European tradable permit system for CO2 emissions.
I know that our major customers are losing power more and more frequently and we can prove it because our landfills are taking sheds loads of warehouses that have gone above the magic refrigeration level at which they have to throw all their food out. Government has presumably said they don’t want the consumer’s lights to go out. There is definitely a power shortage emerging.
Biffa looking at concept of big waste parks – 10 – 20 hectare parks – looking at base load economics of that coming from combined heat and power – delivering electricity and steam into big base load industrial users in a variety of industries.
Biffa development activity inc biggest anaerobic digester …..
Strategy – not incinerator route because big C02 emitters and risky.
Gasification processes – first in Dagenham.
We are currently generating about 110 MW a year which is about 15% of green energy coming out of landfill. If you captured everything in landfill that could go to about 2 or 3 GW. If you put it into a chp framework and took the efficiency from 35% up to 60 or 70% and avoided distribution losses that might be a 5GW contribution to the national infrastructure for electricity of about 65GW which is about 80% of what we are looking for from nuclear.
We are moving from where we are now picking up waste and sticking it into a geological system and instead taking it through sieving processes into energy and materials re-use.

Panellists: Peter Jones; Adrian Cole, Programme Manager, Envirowise; John Firth, Managing Director, Acclimatise

Adrian – Envirowise – keen on promoting resource efficiency – not creating waste in first place.
John – we are a risk management company looking at adaptation agenda on climate change. Particularly interested in resources and SD not what the situation is now but in 20/30 years time when the climate is different. 2003 heat wave with first 100 degree in UK. This will be a 1 in 2 year event by 2040 and what that does to ramifications of SD.
Peter – we are in a solar economy. The bad news is we are using it about 1000 times too fast.
Adrian – we need to get at SMEs - working through networks and supply chains. Boots for example and APB in engineering. The success of the RECs etc. Must work together. Get away from turf wars.
John – businesses respond to their investors. I never use environment or green. This is about hard line economics and corporate governance and delivering well in different economy. Numbers of big financial institutions and banks want to know risks – and this will work through to supply chains so SMEs will have to respond. World really going to be different. Accountants will drive this agenda when it clicks with them.
Peter – some of our national accounts are seeing their waste costs in the context of their energy bill which is a cross over you often don’t get in big businesses with the waste side, which is often connected to the environment side of the business, linking to energy issues.
John – one of our international major energy corporate clients got a 20 year asset lifetime on a £5/6,000,000 project and because we’ve looked at the climate change we expect over that 20 years they’ve radically changed the product design because they’ve seen consequences now of those later impacts of climate change.
Peter – funds and innovation. Disappearing landfills and new technology replacement. City awash with cash. There is currently a mis-match of tax returns and investment needs.