Solar panels boost business goals

Tracy Hother runs Sameday, a courier service that likes to think of itself as friends with the planet. At their offices in Knutsford, Cheshire, they monitor their hot water usage, use minimal artificial lighting, do not heat spaces unnecessarily, and switch unused appliances off.

But Ms Hother is not a die hard green. She is a self proclaimed “penny pinching” manager who estimates that her frugality reduces her energy bills by 40% a year.

In these icy economic times, Tracy’s example may well be one to be followed.

The current downturn is seeing businesses, big and small, cutting costs at every possible opportunity.

Bad news for employees, perhaps. But good news for the planet.

The Federation of Small Business reports that over 99% of UK businesses employ less than 10 people. The Carbon Trust reveals small to medium businesses as generators of a quarter of the UK’s CO2 emissions.

Both agree that it is important for both the economy and the environment that these businesses make an effort to go green.

But for smaller businesses, reaping the rewards means first embarking on green initiatives.

And that is not always easy.

“One of the biggest barriers for small businesses is trust and belief in the methods and results,” says James Millar, environmental advisor for the Forum of Private Business.

It is hard to associate small actions, such as Tracy Hother’s, with potentially substantial rewards.

Sustainability boxes

Reducing costs was also the motivation of Premier Foods during the energy price rises of 2006.

They embarked on a two-year project that reduced the energy usage in the heating and cooling of products.

The producer of foods for well known brands such as Bachelors and Cambell was working in collaboration with a Nottingham University graduate, arranged by the Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP).

As energy prices fell again, other benefits of the project were revealed as Premier Foods was then, because of the project, considered to be a leader business in its field.

This resulted in increased commercial security during a time when many food manufacturing plants were facing closure.

“In order to be an exemplary business these days, you have to be able to tick the sustainability boxes,” advises Andrew Darwent, supervisor of the partnership at KTP.

Dr Debbie Buckley-Golder, KTP Programme Director, agrees.

“We are seeing an increasing number of companies turning to KTP to find innovative ways of reducing costs…. and strengthening their environmental credentials”.

Their motivation is to “not only survive the recession, but come out the other side leaner and fitter”. Another challenge comes from lack of understanding.

In uncertain times, businesses are less likely to try out new, unfamiliar ways of operating, “especially if it involves an initial cost”, and would rather stick to what they know, says Mr Millar.

Nick Tims, manager of War on Waste, recyclable waste collection service, has reverted back to the security of collecting regular waste.

“We know people will always need their normal waste collecting,” he says.

“It’s just easier than trying to expand and find more clients to stay afloat.”

Despite this, Mr Millar has observed that “the ambition of what people want to do is excellent”. This is evident in the increase in enquires received by government funded consultancies such as Envirowise, who observe that “as the threat of a recession became more likely, businesses actively looked for ways to save money”.

“This was evident in increased [Envirowise] website registrations and more demand for events”.

But the effectiveness of these services has been called into question, with the FPB claiming that such agencies are not properly equipped, and the FSB suggesting that they are built on an incorrect model.

“All too often [managers] are stopped from adopting green practices by ill thought out regulation that fails to take account of the needs and characteristics of small businesses,” Mr Millar says.

Even Sameday’s Ms Hother is finding lack of government support a barrier, with an absence of infrastructure and government provided impetus preventing her from converting her fleet to biofuel powered vehicles.

Even for those businesses that do overcome these barriers and want to actually invest in greening their operations, the financing is largely unavailable.

“As the reality of recession took hold towards the latter end of last year… Envirowise noticed a slowdown in interest in projects where longer term investment was required,” says spokesperson Charlotte Knowles.

High Street banks have been turning down loan applications as credit has dried up and directing people towards those that have been surviving the economic downturn.

Triodos Bank, whose mission is to “make money work for positive social, environmental and cultural change”, is one of those.

As a result, it “has seen a marked increase in enquirers for funding and investments in the renewable sector,” says marketing manager Jane Clarke.

“All loans that we give have to go through an ‘in principle’ decision and this is based on whether we feel that the business/organisation is enhancing the world in either a social, cultural or environmental manner,” she says.

This, combined with the increasing volume of applications, means that many green projects are being put on hold or cancelled. racy Hother, FSB and other industry insiders agree that the missing link in the chain is big business.

“Big businesses could learn a lot from small businesses like us,” says Ms Hother, insisting that people such as herself cannot rely on the government.

Instead, they look to big business as they have the ability to adopt and scale up green practices already tried and tested by smaller, more agile businesses.

According to Emma Goss-Custard of environmentally friendly Honeybuns bakery, “there is a real opportunity for ‘big businesses’ [to] kick-start the industry and make it easier for small business to access more environmentally friendly products.”

As a big business representative, Susan Kendal, sustainability director at Akzo Nobel, contributes to the consensus, saying that even with “a planet that is dying around us”, government as well as big and small businesses need to realise that green projects simply “make good business sense”.

Source - BBC News