This Suffolk Carbon Charter visit was to one of those rare British companies – a successful, long-established (seventy years) family business.  As such it looked commercially a lot like the German Mittlestand and culturally a little bit like Grace Brothers in TV’s ‘Are you Being Served?’.  Both are compliments.

Formal (company ties) and tightly run (you suspect noticeboards are checked with a set square) the main driver for low carbon activity was ISO 14001 which complemented their existing ISO 9001 standard. Having a quality policy provided a framework on which to achieve cost savings and CSR credentials – very much in that order – and as such fit the ‘Tin Man’ profile in our Wizard of Oz metaphor.  Nothing wrong with that and well done for fantastic energy and waste savings in recent years.

The question of balancing remaining some or all of their carbon emissions produced an immediate and interesting result.  ‘Cynical’ was the overwhelming feeling both from the hosts and the other visitors.  This was explained by ‘we’d rather invest in more energy saving measures directly’ but this ignores the fact that most of Suffolk’s 28,500 mainly service-based SMEs don’t have the time, money or indeed projects to make significant such change.  More work is needed here.