Monthly Meeting – 6pm
Tuesday 3rd March 2020
Address Details: Scotland House, 5th Floor, 58 Victoria Embankment, London EC4Y 0DS
Ahead of the forthcoming Conference of the Parties – COP 26 – due to be held in Glasgow this summer, Scotland House, London and XTEND – The Executive Network decided that it would be topical to have a joint session on the subject of:
‘Managing Sustainability for Value’
Whilst sustainability isn’t new to business, there is a renewed focus on the sustainability agenda in the wake of climate activism, ethical awareness and the social impact of consumerism. This is increasing pressure on organisations and their operations bringing sustainability practices to the fore.
We will be welcoming two speakers:
Robin Dickinson – XTEND member – who will address sustainability from a wide ranging standpoint; whilst Scott Dickson – Scotland House member – will speak about his experience in launching a Startup and overcoming challenges in making its products sustainable.
Robin Dickinson
The issue of addressing Sustainability at scale is now a fifty year old global project. Robin has been engaged with enabling Sustainability’s application within a business context for the last twenty years. In this session he will briefly start with what is driving Sustainability as a business imperative, and then he will illustrate different dimensions by which businesses have derived benefits associated with increasing the maturity in their management of sustainability and finally discuss how the movement from implementing Sustainability strategies to embedding a Sustainability culture will support business to sustain their value generation which includes sustaining their earnings.
The presentation is targeting senior executives and directors of all companies that have a medium to long term growth mission.
The benefits for business leaders of this talk are:
- Understanding what underpins the relevance of sustainability in a business context and answer such questions as to whether there is an emergency?
- Highlight the different advantages that can derive from implementing Sustainability Strategies
- Highlight the advantage of embedding a Sustainability culture has to sustaining a business’s generation of value
Robin Dickinson is an enthusiastic and accomplished subject matter expert, strategist and program manager who consistently delivers above expectation. Working predominantly in the field of Sustainability Transformation in the UK and internationally, he has progressed the commercial and broader objectives of major organisations such as SAP and the Carbon Trust, as well as a number of niche technology and environmental service companies and not for profit organisations such as the Wildlife Trust. With sector experience in Oil, FMCG/Service/Retail, IT, Construction, Utilities, Local and Central Government, Robin is a director of Analytics app & SAP OEM, Aqoia and Sustainability consultancy Green Growth International. Robin is also a Senior Lecturer in Business Sustainability at Regent’s University Business School London and has recently co-authored a book, published by Routledge, introducing Fractal Sustainability , a tool to assess organisational levels of sustainability mindsets and innovation; Producing company LMS compliance content for TBL, UN Global Compact and SDGs
Scott Dickson
A Startup’s story – The journey to sustainability
Phox is a water filtration brand. Creators of the ‘World’s most eco-friendly water filter’ which features the first reusable cartridge. Our industry, led by Brita sends over 100M plastic cartridges to landfill each year. Our simple solution can put an end to that.
Phox has always had a focus on the environment, developing products that change the status quo and altering the way products are designed in future with sustainability in mind.
The real lack of resources that startups (non-funded) have, make it difficult to start from a point of sustainability. For Phox it is a journey full of challenges overcome and compromises.
In this talk, I will relay the challenges we have had in making our product as sustainable as it can be. From materials sourcing and accreditation, to engineering headaches and what industry can do better for product creators.
Scott Dickson is the Founder of Phox Water, an award-winning startup claiming 3 Scottish Edge Awards and a place on Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘Unlocking Ambition’ cohort. Phox has been featured in the Herald, the Telegraph and the Scotsman recently after the success of their Indiegogo campaign which launched the Phox V2 water filter, gaining £98,000 in pre orders on the platform. Phox have recently moved their manufacturing to Scotland with help from their support partners at Scottish Enterprise and Unlocking Ambition.
Before Phox, Scott founded a commercial water consultancy which saved Scottish Businesses £3M in water utility costs through usage reduction and new contract brokering.