Sustainable Business in the South East: An Overview
The main reason for driving Sustainable Business forward in the South East is to improve its business's productivity and profitability. If South East Businesses collectively take a responsible and sustainable approach to how they conduct their business, the region as a whole will benefit. This means businesses need to assess their sustainable business criteria in what they produce, interact with their supply chain, think about how they affect the environment, where they invest, how they recruit, train and develop their people and lastly, how they engage with the community in which they conduct their business.
Sustainable development is the golden thread permeating through the Regional Economic Strategy for the South East (RES). Sustainable businesses contribute to the delivery of the strategy by enhancing their productivity through more efficient use of resources, raising economic participation rates by providing employment opportunities to disadvantaged groups and reducing waste by investing in recycling schemes.
The RES also ensures that we all have greater knowledge and understanding of emerging threats such as climate change, water scarcity, energy security and promoting sustainable construction practices for business and household properties.
SEEDA is determined to have a credible leadership position in this arena. It is striving vigorously to attain the ISO14001 Environmental Management Accreditation. It is also working in conjunction with the Carbon Trust to generate energy efficiency savings in all our buildings. In Guildford, it has reduced its waste to landfill by over 50% since last year. Water consumption in its buildings is on target to be reduced by over 100,000 litres annually.
SEEDA has been appointed by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to manage and deliver a regional Business Resource Efficiency and Waste (BREW) programme. This is the first year in the programme's delivery and already excellent results are emerging.
On a more strategic level, we work very closely with all the delivery bodies providing advice direct to businesses in this area. Each is actively providing practical help and support to the region's businesses to give them a firm footing on the sustainability journey.
Listed below are the Sustainable Business Partnerships key performance indicators, their collective outputs for the period and a comparison to previous years:
SBP Key Performance Indicators
| Indicator | 2005-2006 | 2004-2005 | 2003-2004 | 2002-2003 |
| Businesses directly engaged | 8,975 | 8,640 | 6,574 | 3,000 |
| Individuals on distribution lists | 21,557 | 23,882 | 35,800 | 28,500 |
| Training places (including SUMS and other training) | 2,153 | 2,905 | 2,312 | 3,600 |
| Site visits conducted | 355 | 934 | 741 | 500 |
| Number of businesses asking for advice | 2,389 | 5,149 | 4,180 | 2,300 |
| Business 'champions' supporting SBPs | 91 | 74 | 70 | 50 |
| External Funding secured | £1.24 million | £2.3 million | £2.03 million | £1.8 million |
| New case studies produced | 88 | 94 | 107 | 73 |
| Environmental suppliers promoted | 1,223 | 1,201 | 1,109 | 560 |
| Jobs created (FTE) | 51 | 16 | 17.5 | 5.5 |