Sustainability Sprints

In conversation with Katie Ridley, Sustainability Manager, Barbour

Katie has worked as a sustainability professional for over 13 years, firstly within the Higher Education sector and now as the Sustainability Manager for Barbour, within the apparel and footwear industry.  Her roles have focussed on pioneering and delivering Sustainability Strategy, from enhancing product circularity to developing education programmes for students.  Her role covers a breadth of responsibilities including carbon, biodiversity and waste, implementing ISO14001 certified Environmental Management Systems and ensuring compliance with (rapidly evolving) sustainability legislation across global markets.

In conversation with Danielle Taylor, Sustainability Manager, South Yorkshire Police

Danielle has been leading embedding and implementing sustainability throughout South Yorkshire Police since 2010. She works nationally, regionally and locally with emergency service organisations and a range of public sector partners, sharing best practice and delivering programmes to affect positive change.  Danielle has developed and implemented a range of initiatives across all areas of force activity, and is currently leading the Net Zero agenda for the force. Previously, Danielle worked as a senior environmental consultant leading a department within a multidisciplinary consultancy. She specialised in sustainable construction, developing and delivering training courses for the Construction Industry Training Board. In this episode, we chat to Danielle about some of the unique challenges faced in embedding sustainability within a police force  as well as how she responds to the more typical challenges of delivering a dynamic agenda with a small team. We consider the importance of a clear strategy, and how critical this has been for helping expand the focus from environmental to social sustainability.  We discuss the need for leadership support, the impact of high staff turnover on sustainability efforts and the need to avoid ‘scope creep’ We are sharing our conversations about sustainability to help you start your own.

In Conversation with Dr Tania Dias Fonseca, Associate Professor & Strategic Academic Lead for Sustainability, Kingston University

With over 20 years experience in education at both secondary school and higher education levels, Tania’s expertise lies in how institutions empower youth to participate in social-environmental scientific decision-making. Tania collaborates with senior leadership, academics, and community stakeholders to drive practice and policy change. Her leadership in this field has been recognized through the 2023 UK and Ireland Green Gown Awards, and as a finalist in the 2024 International Green Gown Awards and the London Higher Awards 2024. Additionally, Tania has served as an advisor and expert to the European Commission, the Azorean Government, Pearson Education and the Museums and Galleries of Scotland on Inclusion and Education for Sustainable Development, to name a few. She has designed participatory tools and training for civic engagement and youth on environmental and sustainable education (e.g.,  http://reda.azores.gov.pt [http://reda.azores.gov.pt/], Education for Sustainability [https://heyzine.com/flip-book/6f177deaa7.html] and Climate Change Pedagogy [https://heyzine.com/flip-book/527842e8b8.html], BIG [https://big-knowledge.co.uk/programmes/design-lab/]).  Tania chats to us about her role in integrating sustainability into the academic framework at Kingston University, including highlighting challenges such as breaking down silos, aligning sustainability with existing agendas like ED&I, and how to avoid this adding extra burden on already overworked colleagues. She shares how she has used the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to embed sustainability into all courses and the ways she ensures authentic integration and avoiding tokenism.  We again emphasize the importance of relational approaches, using existing systems, and where we can find the support needed to embed sustainability effectively. We are sharing our conversations about sustainability to help you start your own.

In conversation with Katherine Rolfe, Head of Sustainability, Wickes

Katherine has over 25 years’ experience working in the sustainability and environmental management profession. Her passion to do something about environmental issues was sparked from a young age when the ozone layer and acid rain were top of the agenda, and climate change was an emerging issue. She soon understood that to make an impact, sustainability needs to be integrated into business-as-usual, balancing economic prosperity with supporting everyone in society and reducing environmental impact.  She worked for Heathrow for many years, and has advised many companies across different sectors how to integrate sustainability into their business. Now as Head of Sustainability for Wickes she is leading the delivery of their sustainability strategy - Built to Last - across the business by inspiring colleagues to lead with sustainability at the heart of their thinking and decision making.  When she is not at work, she is trying to improve the sustainability of her own home ... including getting her two teenagers to turn the lights off when they leave a room! We had a great chat with Katherine about translating sustainability into the language of the business you're working with, when (and why) you might want to be involved in ALL of the conversations and the difference between Sustainability with a Big S and sustainability with a little s. The reminder that sustainability professionals can’t become bored of their own message is always worth hearing and we had get another mention of the importance of finding a supporting and cheerleading crew. We are sharing our conversations about sustainability to help you start your own.

In conversation with Louise Whitaker, Circular Economy Manager, VirginmediaO2

Louise is focused on helping VMO2 customers take 10million circular actions. A circular action might be keeping technology in use for longer, choosing a refurbished device, donating devices, repairing and recycling. Her work centres on building collaborations across the business to develop more ways for customers to take these actions, whilst embedding circularity into different teams within the business. Alongside this, her day to day work includes managing the Time after Time E-waste fund with environmental partner Hubbub, engaging with industry bodies to affect widescale change, coordinating research projects on behaviour change, policy asks, developing ideas for customer offerings, and reviewing the most circular approach for how VMO2 uses technology in its own business. Prior to this, Louise worked in coffee and agricultural supply chains for 15 years, firstly in marketing and brand management roles and latterly as Group Sustainability Manager. Outside of work, sport and the outdoors play a huge role in Louise's life, where she can often be found running the trails and sea swimming with her nutty GSP dog who is just learning how to jump the waves. Her guilty pleasure is an extra large packet of cheesy wotsits. We chat to Louise about her work helping people understand how to become stewards rather than owners of tech, how she’s transferred skills from a marketing background and leaned into them as a sustainability professional and how that helps her to engage with humans in ways that help the agenda. The conversation again considers the importance of networking (a definite theme in all of these chats) and what to consider when you are struggling to get people past the promise and towards delivery. We are sharing our conversations about sustainability to help you start your own.