YNY Growth Hub at Techbuyer

A Marine Bioloigist, Funeral Director and an Energy Consultant walk into a room - sounds like the start of a joke, doesn't it? But it was actually a reflection of the diverse group that attended the latest meeting of the Business Sustainability Peer Network.

The BSPN is a collaboration between the York and North Yorkshire Growth Hub, North Yorkshire Council and the Yorkshire Leadership group with the aim of getting local business together to share sustainability knowledge and success stories. On the fifth of November, representatives from sixteen different businesses and organisations across North Yorkshire met at Techbuyer’s office to do just that.

Once everyone was introduced, the group set about outlining the opportunities and challenges they had faced in running a green business, many of which were familiar to us at Techbuyer.

A particularly common theme was the difficulties in engaging with supply chains to collect Scope 3 data for Carbon accounting. Scope 3 or ‘Indirect emissions’ are the emissions that occur in the value chain of a company but are not generated by a company itself. As a result, there is a reliance on other organisations to report their emissions to you. Unfortunately, suppliers that provide robust reporting without additional cost can be difficult to come by.

One way to tackle this is through supplier outreach and education: at Techbuyer we have invited many of our partners to attend our training sessions in Environmental Sustainability Skills for the Workforce and Foundation in Environmental Management in our capacity as an IEMA accredited training centre.

Another challenge facing local enterprises is engaging their employees in Sustainability and establishing a drive for the workforce to get behind an organisation’s Sustainable interventions. With a variety of business sizes present at the BSPN there were a range of solutions presented. One such solution is engagement in the UN Sustainable Development Goals – choosing achievable targets for your organisation with the ultimate aim of achieving global peace and prosperity and setting realistic outcomes to work together collectively toward. See Techbuyer’s progress towards the goals here.

To give our guests a better understanding of the work we do at Techbuyer (and to be the best possible hosts) we followed up the discussion with a warehouse tour introducing our teams and facilities, including our 3D printers, repair, and test teams.

“The Business Sustainability Peer Network is brilliant for businesses to educate each other on the best way to tackle the challenges of Sustainability.

The visit to Techbuyer was exciting and uplifting, proving that if we apply ourselves, the circular economy can inspire innovative, cost-effective to timeless problems and reduce waste”.

Andrew Bishop – BishopSound

The next meeting of the BSPN, hosted by our friends at Make it Wild is unfortunately fully subscribed, but you can still find out more here.