Lucideon’s Sustainability Workshop: Gaining a Competitive Edge

Last Friday, EAUC Gold Company Member Lucideon held a sustainability workshop at their Stoke headquarters. The aim of the workshop was to explore and capitalise on aspects of sustainability in order to gain a competitive edge.

There was a short welcome and introduction from Tony Kinsella, CEO, Lucideon. This was then followed by Andrew Smith, Head of Sustainability & Construction Materials at Lucideon, who delivered the first talk on the current policy landscape. He investigated various policy trends such as the post 2015 development agenda, resource efficiency driving the green economy and the UK interpretation of sustainable development.

Anthesis Director Ann Durrant spoke in great length about how to engage employees with your sustainability plan. Using case studies from a variety of sectors including recycling at Keele University, Northern Rail style Dragon’s Den and SABMiller, Ann offered many simple but effective methods on how to motivate and create an enlightened and sustainability conscious workforce. Making action simple and meaningful was message to take away from this presentation. On better, smarter procurement David Dowson (Environmental Advisor at Skanska UK) provided an overview on how to procure services with a minimised environmental impact. He alluded to some examples including the supply chains school project and solar power bins.

After lunch, Tracy Clewlow from Staffordshire University gave an academics perspective into what is driving sustainability forward in marketing and procurement. Tracy presented key findings from research showing how marketing is important to help 'normalise' green behaviours, products and services. Using academic research she concluded that companies who implement sustainability now are more likely to prosper and succeed in the future.

The last guest speaker of the day was David Tovey, UK Environment & Risk Prevention Manager at Michelin Tyre PLC. He discussed the Michelin Performance and Responsibility (PRM), their sustainable governance programme. In addition to briefly highlighting third-party analysis by external companies and information disclosure.

In his final presentation, using case studies Andrew Smith demonstrated the benefits of operating an inclusive approach to enable key sustainability and resource efficiency objectives to be met. The event ended with a panel Q&A session with all of the guest speakers. They took questions from the floor on a range of issues such as incorporating sustainability into design, ethical breaches and corruption and sustainability and social impact.

To sum up, this workshop offered up some very interesting insights on future trends in sustainability, ways to learn from others and navigating the most effective course of action for business.

Take a look at what happened during the day using the hashtag #sustainwshop2015

This is a blog post written by Seth Kirby, Membership Engagement Officer, EAUC.