Sustainability Breakfast - The Conduit

Thursday 23 Feb 2023

8.30am – 10.30am

SUSTAINABILITY

BREAKFAST & ROUND TABLE EVENT

With special guest speakers:

Marcus Watson, Non-Executive Director – Ground Control

Steve Sharratt OBE , CEO and founder – IBMS Group

Duncan Oswald, Climate Science Lead – Sage

6 Langley St, London WC2H 9JA

TABLE DISCUSSION

Do you measure your carbon footprint, and do you have a plan to achieve net zero?

Does your waste enter the circular economy?

What are the dangers of greenwashing?

Why are biodiversity and nature recovery important to business?

What legacy will you leave?

SPEAKERS

Marcus Watson, Non-Executive Director – Ground Control

Marcus believes that business is a force for good and that, as business leaders, we have the opportunity and indeed duty to build a vibrant and more sustainable economy that cares for our environment and the communities we live in, allowing us to lead prosperous, fulfilling lives without mortgaging our children’s futures. Marcus is a hands-on CEO, investor, and NED, who thinks with the mindset of a founder. He inspires people to perform at their best and achieve more than was thought possible. Agreeing and setting strategy collaboratively, he leads people as individuals and fosters award-winning innovation and technology. Multi-awardwinning, including two Queen’s Award for Enterprise and one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For”, Marcus champions outstanding customer service and loyalty, producing market-beating growth and leadership in chosen markets. He has multi-sector expertise across business services, asset & property services, science, aerospace & defence, education. He is bilingual English and French with international experience (Belgium, USA, Saudi Arabia). Marcus champions the voice of business & entrepreneurship and environmental sustainability. He is a Council Member for the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), a member of the CBI’s Decarbonisation Committee, a NED, and past Chair of the Young President’s Organisation (YPO) Mayfair and a Life Fellow of the Institute of Directors. He regularly contributes thought-leadership pieces in various media. With a keen interest in education and life-long learning, Marcus is a post-graduate visiting professor at Warwick University with interests in strategy, entrepreneurship, innovation, leadership, climate change, and sustainability. Marcus lives in Surrey with his wife Jane and his twin daughters Grace and Ella. In his spare time, Marcus cycles a little, fundraising for charity. His latest solo unsupported ride for Alzheimer’s Society took him 1,370 miles to the four cardinal points of mainland Britain.

Steve Sharratt OBE, CEO and founder

IBMS Group

Steve started his career as a corporate finance lawyer before moving into running businesses over the past 18 years. Steve has chaired and run businesses including management consultancy, roofing and cladding, steel structures and fabrication, retail, food production, processing of waste, anaerobic digestion development, composting development and operations. For the past 14 years, Steve has developed businesses which help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by capturing harmful methane greenhouse gas from food waste and converting it into useful sustainable energy. Steve’s vision is of local organic waste collection points, generating clean, renewable energy for local communities and using some of the fantastic by-products of creating energy naturally, to power and feed hydroponics units, growing food and also “growing” insect proteins. These community-based sites blend in with the community and the environment. The DBE Energy facility in Surrey blends with nature providing a haven for wildlife as diverse as peregrine falcons and deer. The drive is to ensure we can leave a healthier world to our children and grandchildren. We all have to make our contribution; small steps add up. Steve has also found that where low carbon is put at the heart of projects, they become more economically sustainable as well as environmentally sustainable. Business can prosper by doing the right thing. Steve also sits on the CBI Decarbonisation Board and chairs the CBI Decarbonisation Policy Committee. He also sits on the Surrey Greener Futures Board and the Surrey One Growth Board. He was awarded the OBE in 2009 for services to business.

Duncan Oswald, Climate Science Lead – Sage

Duncan started his environmental career around the time of the Earth Summit in Rio, which was supposed to be “a new blueprint for international action on the environment.” Since then, we have managed to emit more greenhouse gases than we did in the whole of human history before then, we have continued to destroy habitats and drive species to extinction at a rate unprecedented in Earth’s history, and we have failed to meet one of our sustainable development goals. During this period, Duncan worked on environmental management systems development for hundreds of businesses, sustainable construction and EcoHomes assessment for housing associations and architects, legal compliance for industry bodies and private companies, research projects, circular economy business plans, energy and resource efficiency programmes, green design, green finance, carbon foot printing, net zero transition plans and reporting for clients ranging from small businesses to national governments. He founded, built up and ran an environmental consultancy business, and picked up a bunch of accreditations including Chartered Environmentalist and Fellow of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment. He is a qualified Environmental Auditor and ESOS Lead Energy Assessor. Realising a couple of years ago that this approach was not working, Duncan left consultancy to join automated carbon accounting startup Spherics, to develop the potential for small businesses to generate carbon footprints automatically. Spherics was recently acquired by Sage, opening the opportunity to apply this automated approach to millions of businesses at once. He remains optimistic that this might work.