"Complacency is not an option," says director at £386m-turnover building supplies firm

INNOVATION is inextricably linked to being green these days, said Chris Harrop, director of sustainability at building suppliers Marshalls.

Mr Harrop is also chairman of the United Nations Global Compact UK Network, and green business is his business.

With the Business Unusual conference, spearheaded by Business in the Community, Mr Harrop and the organisers want to call companies to action on the sustainability agenda.

Mr Harrop said: “The answer to a lot of global problems is to be more sustainable.

“The growing awareness of environmental challenges is resulting in businesses grappling with what their responsibility is and struggling with it.”

Business Unusual seeks to showcase examples where people have rewritten rules and been successful by doing things in a different way, he said.

Marshalls, a FTSE 250-listed company last month posted a pretax profit of £35.3m for the year ended December 31, up 57% as revenue rose 8.0% to £386.2m.

It is an example of using innovation of a major scale to not only increase profits but also create a more sustainable and responsible business.

Mr Harrop said: “What we’ve done successfully is produce a whole range of procus water and flood management and protection, developing mainstream paving into permeable paving, with all the same function – taking a product and giving them multiple functions.”

Marshalls has been in the business of sustainability for more than 10 years with products such as permeable paving, but, Mr Harrop said, it has only been in the last five years that other companies are starting to follow suit.

He said: “We were ahead of the curve and that is one of the messages of the conference, spotting the trends early and being prepared. When you are seeing something innovative in the news it’s too late.

“If we go back 10 years, in discussions around climate change the science was there but the impact was missing, there was lots of academic models that temperature would increase by X degrees. But it was only when you start to see the impact that businesses put two and two together and realise what they are doing is causing effects.

“I think where we’ve got to that stage where businesses can’t afford to ignore it and if they don’t prepare through mitigation or new products then businesses will come under increasing pressure. Their long term survival will be at risk.

Mr Harrop finished: “The challenge is embracing this, adapting products and services for a new world. Complacency is not an option.”

High profile speakers from M&S, Tesla Motors and Yorkshire Water’s own Richard Flint will feature at the major environment conference in Leeds on May 12, sponsored by Yorkshire Water.

 

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