FROM THE INDUSTRY
value and purpose, that it’s measurable and transparent. The B Corp pillars gave us all of that and allowed us to follow a pathway towards being a better company. That is probably not as easy as it sounds. Of all of the things that I’ve done, even ISO, this was actually really complicated, because it touches every element of your organisation. We had to change our Articles of Association, HR policies and people handbooks. It also impacted our strategy for our supply chain. It was a massive undertaking, but it signals to all our stakeholders that our intent is true in order to become a better company. The next generation only work for companies they want to work for and increasingly who demonstrate their credentials for social value and environmental impact. I feel quite inspired and comforted by the fact that generation are prepared to do that. The other thing is it’s found some heroes, which we didn’t expect. Heroes? One of my team went off and started looking at how we make tarmac more sustainable. When you dig tarmac up it’s really important you put the layers of soil back in the ground in the right
How does your B Corp status tie in with your sustainability objectives? If you truly believe and love where you come from, then you must take some accountability for it. I’ve spent most of my life championing sustainability issues. I personally believe that if we don’t do something we are heading for a probable mass extinction event, if we’re not careful, or at very least some serious issues with the environment. In Cornwall we have a close association with the outdoors. People live so far away from each other that you have to travel some distance to get anywhere. You’ve got water on three sides when it’s blowing a gale (and we have 150 odd storm days a year) the rain is horizontal and you can’t hear yourself think. If you want to feel what it’s going to be like if we have a rise in sea temperature and what’s going to follow on in terms of our temperature and climate, come to Cornwall on a November day during a sea storm and watch the world go white with salt. That’s becoming more common. Many of the people who work for us are like-minded. We built an ESG agenda. There is the issue of greenwashing. You’ve got to have clear metrics, demonstrate that what you are doing has
order. How you deal with tarmac is also really important. He started working with one of our suppliers, Dynamic Fibre and sure enough discovered actually there’s all sorts of things we can do around aggregate, around concrete to make ourselves more sustainable. There was real buy-in by the team and they were all striving to make this better. Secondly the B Corp journey was also too much to take on our own, so we did some research; in the end we had about 40 companies step forward who went on the B Corp journey with us and we formed a community programme called B23 so we could all follow the B Corp journey together. This means that Cornwall now has more B Corps than any other county outside of London. We’re very dependent on each other down here, there are so few of us. All of us coming together and helping each other was a great experience.
Tell us a bit more about Project Gigabit.
Project Gigabit is the UK government’s rollout of lightning-fast, reliable broadband across the UK. The economics of building rural fibre are not straightforward; you need volume, competitive costs and scale. We’re working on solid granite, and whilst there is some existing
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Volume 46 No.4 DECEMBER 2024
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