Positive change through the built environment: if not now, when?

COMMENT There is no more important topic than how our businesses impact the environment and society, and we believe there is no better opportunity to create transformational social and environmental impact than through our town centres. Stakeholders in these locations can make the lives of their communities better through amenity, economic, social and educational improvements. How we choose to construct these spaces and what we choose to fill them with have direct consequences for our planet. As professionals with day-to-day involvement in both social and environmental decision making, we have a responsibility to push for positive change. As part of our vision to create the UK’s most sustainable and inclusive communities, at Ellandi we have been looking at how we can tune each area of our business impact. Some self-reflection was required. We recognised that we were very much on a journey, but questioned how quickly we could progress with tactical (albeit worthy) steps. A model, not a badge Our application for B Corporation status is a decision to take environmental considerations from the end of our processes as a filter and put them at the very beginning as a driver. It’s a commitment to our partners, peers and colleagues to work to the highest verified standards of social, environmental and legal accountability. B Corp is not a badge to approve our processes, it’s a model for actively overhauling them. In the words of PwC, “B Corp is to business what Fair Trade is to coffee.” Perhaps most fundamentally, it marks a shift in our legal governance, with our accountability to the environment weighing equally to our accountability to our shareholders. B Corp focuses on not only environmental sustainability but how we engage with and treat our employees, partners, supply chain and communities. Our journey so far has instigated open and sometimes challenging debate about our current practices and entirely new areas that could make a difference. This has led to an ongoing review of each of our centres, looking at where we can replace current features with more sustainable or biodiversity-encouraging alternatives. It has kicked off an information gathering process on our emissions and what the path to carbon neutral might look like. It has also prompted wider discussion about how we can select our charity partners in a transparent way that engages everyone across our business. We are reviewing our supply chain, ensuring those we work with share the same values and approach as us. We are assessing staff policies from parental leave, how benefits and pay are structured and health and safety policy to employee engagement and satisfaction levels. Inspiring others Our industry colleagues at Threesixty Architecture started their B Corp journey because the principles resonated with their vision, values and purpose, which is to “make places better”, and gives them a formal certified process to continually improve. It also reinforces internal ESG principles to staff, helping to retain and attract the right candidates. As we assess our performance in each category, we become much more aware of all the potential for impact that we had previously overlooked, and can create a route map for our future operation. Most of our new starters cite our vision as their prime motivation for joining our business. The B Corp model has given us a continual and systematic way to engage them in the improvement of environmental impact – something we have always wanted to do but have perhaps lacked a structured approach for. Normally, we would shy away from shamelessly plugging a cause and our internal activities. But repeatedly throughout our application we have found ourselves saying that if we had started this process two years ago, we would be so much further along. The real estate industry has made solid improvements in the way it operates, but there is still a need for more action across the board. We are hoping more discussion about action from ourselves and partners like Threesixty will inspire others to start their journey sooner. Ruth Moorhouse is head of public/private partnerships at Ellandi