Sustainability as a Growth Strategy: Winning Work, Reducing Risk and Creating Impact

Lauren Rabbitte

Good morning everyone and welcome to Go Green Now's latest educational series webinar. Joining me today is Ltt Group, Jonathan. Nice to have you with us, Jonathan.

Jon Wragg

Thank you very much. Hi, very nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Lauren Rabbitte

Great. Our key topic today is sustainability as a growth strategy, helping businesses win work, reduce risk and create impact. Now, just before we get dive into that conversation with with Jonathan, I'd like to outline quickly a brief part of the agenda.

So we're going to cover today some crucial topics, mainly why sustainability is no longer just a compliance issue. Why many businesses actually feel stuck in the landscape. How sustainability can become a commercial advantage to businesses and what businesses should do next along those steps and pathways.

One of the things that Jonathan is on this webinar to really do today is to also explain the role that he plays with Ltt Group and the work that they've done, use some case study examples so that we can share that with the audience here today. So, Jonathan, if we just really get straight into it then. So if we look at sustainability as a growth strategy and start with why sustainability is no longer just a compliance issue.

I know you do a lot of work with customers, tenders, procurement teams, investors and advising on supply chains. Now we have a lot more harder questions to ask in that process. Could you elaborate a bit more on why sustainability is no longer just a compliance issue?

Jon Wragg

Yeah, I think itself and what I try and do is rule everything down to its smallest denominator, really, because everything is a big, big, big issue when it comes to this. I think we talk about a compliance issue. I think you're looking at different sizes of business and that is ultimately the supply chain as a whole as well.

Yes, there's lots of complex things, whether you talk about public procurement, private procurement, whether you're talking B2C, B2B or whatever. But one thing I'll talk about today specifically is kind of that B2B supply chain environment, whether it be public procurement or private procurement. And when you're looking at a complex issue, what's changed massively, first of all, is the legislation that large organisations are under.

And that kind of push. Now, having been a former chief sustainability officer, global sustainability director in the past, I always knew that I could hugely control my scope one and scope two, for example, the impact that we could make as a company. But when it actually came to buying better, well, that tends to be forced on the products we were buying.

Yet the legislation was always going to push me down a very specific avenue of actually making sure that I buy from better companies as well, which is right. And it's the way that it should be, because there are some unbelievably amazing sustainable products out there. But quite frankly, the businesses that are selling them aren't that sustainable.

They're not. And that's where risk can pose. So actually, if you look at like, why is sustainable now a compliance issue?

Well, from top down, you're now looking at how can your supply chain help you as a large organisation, whether that be the NHS or if you want complex or a private business, a pharma company or a FTSE 100. How can that supply chain help you reduce what you're now targeted on, which is scope three emissions? Because as an organisation, you should have definitely been looking at scope one and scope two.

You probably had great success in reducing those emissions. You've aligned to the right targets. You've done the right things internally.

And that was a whole change management system, getting people on board and doing those amazing things. But actually, as a large organisation, you can only influence your supply chain so much. You buy from those.

Well, nine times out of ten, you're going to buy from them because they give you the right product at the right price. Let's be completely honest. So those people are the majority of your scope three, where that product comes from, the logistics that are involved, the logistics that you get involved in part of those things.

They are scope three. And if you're going to reduce those, you need a better way of actually influencing those people than just sending out a questionnaire. So when you're talking about, well, moving away from compliance, well, asking questions is well and good.

But if you want to see it from the other side, what the businesses in the supply chain, those businesses that don't come under the same legislation, those businesses that turn under 100 million, or in some cases under 60 million, under 50 million, those really important manufacturers, suppliers, systems suppliers, trainers, organisers, those supply chain partners, those suppliers, those vendors, whatever you want to call them.

Well, they don't actually realise that they're scope three. They're being asked the question, they've never actually been targeted on those things before. So the shift from compliance to commercialisation really is getting those people educated in the right way to actually make sure that they're not just selling more sustainable products at a price that's affordable, but also themselves being better businesses and therefore reducing the risk to buy off.

If they are reducing their environmental footprint, increasing their social impact, if they are aligning the accreditations to the companies that they wish to supply, then that actually not only helps the bigger businesses comply, it helps the smaller businesses actually become more commercial because they should be able to keep supplying these businesses. And that's kind of where the world's going. And it sounds very complex, but the big businesses tend to look at supply chain through spend, and it is quite linear.

The small businesses tend to look at the big businesses as actually that's the way to growth and the way to get more business in and to keep growing. What they don't understand is to get that, they need to actually meet certain specific criteria, especially around accreditations, carbon and social impact and all these things that are now triggering what's been pushed down the line.

Lauren Rabbitte

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I think you're briefly touching upon it there. Many businesses actually feel stuck.

And lots of businesses know exactly what information they need. Or let's be honest, simply now they can ask a ChatGPT the information that almost removes that entire department, which is very interesting. But they lack the information on where to start or how to use the information to make it useful, which is a real shame.

And I take it that from your work, you know how to further advise on that then.

Jon Wragg

Yeah, I don't think it's kind of I know how to unlock the key. I think having come from a background of being working in very complex supply chain, whether that be packaging, automotive, merch is very complicated, printed merch, for example. Actually seeing what a supply chain looks like from my point of view as a chief sustainability officer who positioned himself perfectly between sales, because as a business, I knew that if I could position myself with sales, we could get more custom.

Therefore, I could get more budget, therefore create more impact. And also positioning myself with purchasing to make sure that we were understanding what our scope 3 looked like, what was possible, who we could contact, who we were buying from. Can we buy better and not only better products, but better businesses?

Well, actually, having looked at that, that's why we set up Ltt, because I knew that I could influence so much. I could only ask so many questionnaires. I'd be lucky if I got 15% response rate, that would be seen as exceptional.

And the more I talked to chief sustainability officers, that was kind of the norm. But actually, when you're saying, well, what can, what is that and what can kind of go there? It's not about unlocking the key.

There are lots of amazing small businesses out there that have accreditations. What they're not very good at is looking beyond the accreditation and looking at the accreditation gives them. So you take, I don't know, ISO 14001. Well, that's environmental management.

But if as a purchaser, you've got a chief sustainability officer like I used to be, and there's many of us out there. Well, actually, we don't want to know that you've got the certificate. We want to know the evidence behind what that's changed.

How has that certificate actually improved your business? Do you know the journey you're on? Do you know where you are on that journey?

And do you know what it's going to take to get better? That doesn't matter whether it's carbon, environmental management, operations, product, whatever. That's kind of the journey that large businesses expect suppliers to be on.

What tends to happen is small businesses get the accreditation because either their competitors have got it or they've been told that they must have it. And then they tend not to look too much beyond that. It tends to be left to a technical team or a compliance team.

What's not happening is the data managing there is not going to other departments. Sales don't really know what's behind it. Marketing don't really know what's behind it.

The board aren't getting that progress in the right way and updated. So, therefore, it's not a commercial. It's just purely compliance.

Well, if you're going to do purely compliance and not make it commercial, then actually you're getting no ROI of an accreditation. EcoVadis is amazing. ISOs are amazing.

These things are amazing, but you have to look beyond them and answer the question, especially in tenders. And you mentioned ChatGPT there doing tender answers. Well, quite frankly, I don't know where to start with that.

I see a lot of tender responses and you can spot an AI written one a mile off. What AI doesn't do when it comes to answering the question is give you the three key words, which means what? If you've got something that is really good at saying a bit of fluff around, we have this accreditation, we've reached it, blah, blah, blah.

EcoVadis, we got a rating, this is what we scored. What it doesn't do, because it doesn't know your business inside and out, it cannot give you the which means what. And that's where procurement has changed now.

Procurement is no longer asking you for an accreditation. Most of your competitors will have it. So, that's seen as the benchmark.

What they want to know to actually get the scores, what they want to know to actually push you further as a business and be actually less risk as a procurement exercise is which means what. What does all that mean to us as a buyer? And how does that improve us sustainably wise, but also reduce our risk purchasing wise?

How do these accreditations reduce risk of buying, whether that be brand risk, commercial risk, whatever that risk is, environmental risk. And that's what it is now. It's that shift to reducing risk, whilst at the other end, increasing commerciality.

And it's not that we've unlocked the key. It's just that we know how to read between the lines and see, understand what people are actually asking for.

Lauren Rabbitte

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think it's something I've seen being from a manufacturing background and also speaking with companies about tenders, where they've put together tenders, not really knowing the specifics because they don't have an individual working in a sustainable role. So, therefore, they either have to outsource the help or they try and use an AI version to help them.

And you're exactly right. It lacks, particularly, I would say, the social value meaning that it cannot seem to comprehend and put in to that tender bid. And also, at the end of the day, you've got to think about the person that's going through those tender applications on the other side and choosing who they want to do business with as a human.

Jon Wragg

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, yes, there are many incidences now where AI is used as part of the scoring matrix in the purchasing requirement because if you're sending out to multiple suppliers and it's not just the old standard rule of thumb of sending out to three to five, you send out to multiple for something very complicated, AI can help you read between the lines and quite actually can cut through a lot of the fluff. But if you're getting asked sustainability questions, and they come in different guises, some will be in quality, some will be scored as sustainability, some will come as part of operations or whatever, what it won't really do is cut through the price.

That's kind of left alone. But if you're being asked, especially if you're being asked to show evidence on how you're helping or how you're reducing your environmental footprint, how are you managing your energy? How are you doing these things?

And your answer is something along the lines over the past 12 months we've used, I don't want to name it, but I don't know, a company like Treeapp, we've donated X amount of money and we've done all this and then you go into a big spiel on that using the whole word count. Well, I look at that and it's not actually answered the question. You're not telling me how you've reduced your energy.

What I want to know is what have you done practically and not strategically, but operationally in your business to help reduce your energy management? Are you aligned to ISOs? Are you aligned to carbon footprint analysis?

Do you do carbon accounting? Has that triggered some easy wins for you to reduce your carbon footprint? Have you switched your energy supplier?

Have you installed solar panels? That's what I want to know. And then if you have done that, what does it mean?

What does it mean? What is it actually achieved? If you've invested X in doing Y, what's the Z outcome that that actually does?

That's what's scorable. Adding a load of fluff about what you've done with either a charity or some tree planting or offsetting or something like that is lovely. It's a great story, but it's not scorable.

It doesn't score because it doesn't answer the which means what question, which is actually what procurement's looking for.

Lauren Rabbitte

Yeah, which is what I think a lot of people forget or also don't realise, which is quite disappointing. But to be completely honest, there doesn't seem to be enough information or enough education about it. And particularly, I think if we look at the commercial aspect, two years ago, sustainability reporting was a hot topic.

And people started to open up their doors and go, OK, we'll discuss this from a commercial advantage point. And now I feel we're progressing even further to understand where the real opportunity is, no matter what the sector really is. And I'm sure you've seen it across various sectors working with different organisations, how sustainability can actually help businesses with tenders because they're worth a significant amount of money if they win the contract.

Strengthen customer relationships and, I guess, improve reputation, which drives more business, attracts more talent to the company and build long-term value. So do you have maybe a specific example, Jonathan? You may not want to name them, but a specific example of a company, like a case study that you've worked with where you've advised them on this pathway and what that's done for them.

Jon Wragg

Yeah, absolutely. I can. But I think before we get to that, I think the way sustainability is, and especially with, I'm not going to blanket all sales teams because it doesn't really work like that.

But as a sustainability person, if there's one person in an organisation that I really want to train in what to do, what's being done and about it, is the sales team. And that's often overlooked. It's usually, it goes to marketing, it goes to procurement teams, it can go to the board level, and a lot of consultants like that, and it's very safe.

I like nothing more than sitting in a room full of salespeople in this and them understanding the questions that they've been asked and what good looks like in responses, what's accurate, what's right, based on either the work that they're currently doing or what we can do and what we can say. A, it reduces greenwashing massively, which is a really hot topic even now, but also it's about that. So a great case study, a client of ours was a long-time supplier of a major hospitality brand.

And themselves, as a business, are actually incredibly sustainable. They have multiple awards, they have lots of things. But the hospitality company decided that their procurement was going to align to EcoVadis, and therefore, if their supplies didn't have EcoVadis and a certain rating, they wouldn't be supplying them anymore.

Now, I've got two examples of this. I've got one example where they just didn't supply the company anymore. But another example was one where they didn't understand what they were really being asked, went for EcoVadis blind very quickly, and actually failed.

And that did more harm than good because not only did they get kicked off the supply chain portal of this major supplier very quickly, which it turns out was over 30% of their revenue, but also what they realised were they were really good at talking the talk. But what they couldn't ever do is provide the proof, the policies, the background, the management systems, the work, the evidence that is needed, not only for EcoVadis, but actually the likes of these large hospitality companies, and just the hospitality, you can also go into pharma and things, are now looking for to reduce their risk. So, yes, they reached out to us because they'd effectively failed.

They'd failed. We had two reach out at the very same time for the same hospitality company. One couldn't go for it.

They didn't understand it. They really didn't. And we're now working with them, and that's a great example of how they're going to change.

The ones that's a real big one is the ones that actually failed. And when we looked at it, and the work that we've done is a prime example of where sustainability really adds benefit, so long as it has an inward look at lots of different departments. So, yes, we were able to look at Top End and see that their policies weren't right, and they weren't aligned.

In many cases, they weren't scorable because they weren't even branded. Their company handbook wasn't very good, and therefore staff and training wasn't tracked all the way through. Even though they were a good company, they were just small and family-owned company.

The likes of their environmental policy was good, but they'd been using a carbon calculator that was quite old school and, quite frankly, gave them a badge for just a nice badge. They thought it gave them everything, but the badge that we're getting is actually nothing. It didn't line to anything that was traceable.

It didn't show them any reductions. It didn't give them any guidance. They never actually spoke to them.

They just took some data, gave them a nice number in tonnes of CO2e, and then spat out what very much looks like an AI written report constantly. And then they got a badge for doing that work. Well, once again, if you look at what this hospitality company was actually looking for, it was looking to score risk within its supply chain.

It's aligned to EcoVadis, so it could judge suppliers on environmental, sustainable procurement, ethics, and labour standards. If you can't prove that, then why would this large hospitality company want you supplying them? Because that's every legislation that they're under now.

It means that they have to reduce risk in their supply chain. So is it a quick fix? No.

We're six months into this work, and it's not even... Trust me, we're not dragging our heels. It's just these things take time.

There's a lot of training in lots of different departments to understand why this is important, why it's important that we track. What we're also doing is making sure that it's managed right, so there's lots of training at management level, and actually commercial level as well, so the sales team understand the importance of this work. They want to get back on the supply chain portal.

They do, and I'm very confident that they will once they can resubmit for EcoVadis in the next nine months. So look, it's going to be a fantastic piece of work. It's a prime example of they're a sustainable company.

They've got great awards. They've won local business awards for being a sustainable business. But what they didn't have is the accreditations and evidence to back up what they were saying.

They could never answer the, which means what, or we've got this to prove it. Here's the systems, the work that we do. They could say things like we've reduced our packaging by XX percentage.

I couldn't see any data to back that up. So does that work with marketing, that work with sales, that work with everything to understand where they were and what we could do and how we could go forward. And that's just one.

Right now we are working with multiple clients in finance, hospitality, engineering, manufacturing, chemicals, because we understand the large businesses that they either currently supply or they want to start supplying through their growth mechanisms. And that's the case study that we can just churn out constantly because we're doing that work every single day.

Lauren Rabbitte

No, brilliant. And it's great to hear. That's why I always like case study examples, because you hear firsthand about the work that you're actually doing and the companies reflected within that.

So I think for the audience here today then, Jonathan, can you tell us why you created Ltt Group? And I guess essentially what gap you saw in the market. You've touched on that a little bit, but if you could elaborate a bit more, that'd be brilliant.

Jon Wragg

Yeah. So, I mean, I can tell you how I created Ltt Group. It was a drunken decision in a pub because I was moaning about my current job.

So when I was looking at my job as a chief sustainability officer, I could get great tech to help me show certain impacts that I was controlling. I could get great dashboards. I could get some great consultants that could help me strategically and help me report and meet certain accreditations.

What I was really struggling with due to lack of budget, but that's the same for any sustainability department, I believe, was the operational side of what I needed. I needed people beyond the likes of the accreditation providers which charge an absolute fortune to be there for me and actually show me what I was buying by those people that weren't answering my questionnaires. So I kind of needed operational work.

I couldn't do it myself. And we were a small team, a very, very large company. Like most sustainability teams, we were not as big a team as people thought we were.

And I was looking at that. And with my co-founder, Steph, we were kind of looking at, well, if this problem is only going to get bigger, why don't we offer that operational support to these large businesses? So very simply, what does Ltt do?

We work with very large businesses to identify risk in their supply chain. But what we mean by risk is we actually look at those businesses that you're supplying from. If your spend is 400 million and you're spending 1 million with a small business, well, in your mind, that might be 1 400th of your spend.

So that small business, well, that could be an incredible amount of money to those. What we do is that operational get behind the scenes. We get a warm introduction to that business to say you're not currently answering the questions that we need as a supplier.

We'd like to introduce you to Ltt. And then we do an educational session with them. We understand, are they doing the work?

We don't just rely on a questionnaire. We actually have that conversation and even work through that questionnaire, whether that's in person or whether that's on site or whether it's over a Zoom call, and actually find out what's really behind the business. Why are they not answering the questionnaire?

Is it because they don't do it? Is it because they don't know how to answer it? What is that that they're actually missing?

And then we help them. And very simply, we can either advise them for free. We can show how they need to do it, what they need to do to align, because we've been paid by the large corporate to be introduced.

Or we can help them. We can offer our services. And we have an incredible success rate of being introduced by one of our large business partners and then working with those businesses and helping those small businesses report back to their large clients that they're supplying into.

That helps the large clients, because now they understand that risk is reduced from buying these and they can continue to buy from them. It helps the small business go, okay, now we're better at supply for those. What's next?

Let's take that next step. Let's go for that. So that's what we do.

That's the gap we fill. We're not there to change a business's strategy. We're there to help them operationally in their supply chain.

And when we are there working operationally, we are there to actually help them commercially grow. But at the end of the work we do, we do churn out more sustainable businesses because the work we do is around the sustainability agenda.

Lauren Rabbitte

No, it's a brilliant concept. That's something that's definitely needed. Perhaps can you elaborate a bit more on the software that you actually have?

Jon Wragg

Yes. So we have our own software. We have a supply chain piece of software that allows, if a large business, for example, is using EcoVadis, we show the other side of that.

So EcoVadis is amazing at showing the businesses that have EcoVadis and what they have. Where it's not very good at is the other side of that coin of showing actually what the other businesses have. If they don't have EcoVadis, that's what our piece of tech does.

So our piece of tech very simply shows not only public alignment, but also risk alignment and where they sit, the size of their business, where they are, and various other criterias. And we have quite a few financial institutions that use that bit of tech. The other bit of tech that we have is what helps SMEs actually go from that.

So we have an SME-sized carbon calculating platform, which is called Vizibli, which we partner with very well and that works great for us. And we help not only introduce that, but then train the SME on how to use that themselves and actually go from not using a consultant, but actually take charge of that. So we have multiple bits of tech, including social impact partners as well, that are tech and we can help actually SMEs really show their value of the work they're doing beyond assessing accreditation if that's not right for them.

Lauren Rabbitte

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think technology and software, any tools that individuals and businesses can use surrounding this topic to help them is great. I definitely know that your product is fantastic and unique in that space, particularly with helping businesses on evaluating supply chains and the sustainable metrics of that.

That is definitely a different approach to look at things and it's all in the reporting, right? It's all in what comes out of the metrics.

Jon Wragg

Yeah, and just on that really, I think what's important is and where we identified the gap is, there's lots of companies that can show risk. There's lots of companies that can show a dashboard. What we do is once it's identified, we then go into it.

We're effectively deployed into that supply chain and we help those supply chain partners. We're not there to just go, this is a risk, kick them off. It's a really easy way to do it.

The reason we do that is if you look at where I'm from, and I'm incredibly proud of it, I'm from Sheffield. But if you look at South Yorkshire and beyond, there's not many large businesses, I mean, super large businesses that are headquartered here. What we have, the M1 and M18 corridor, is a supply chain.

We have a lot of businesses that make a lot of stuff, but they do not understand this on a commercial level. They understand it from a holistic level. They understand it from a, it's a cost centre level that if we buy some trees, it's going to cost us some money.

If we do this, sponsor a charity, it's going to cost us some money. What they don't understand is the commercial value of the supply chain piece and the procurement piece. That's why I'm very lucky that we just celebrated our first birthday and we've had tremendous success very quickly because we understand what the large businesses need, which is the operational side, what the small businesses and suppliers need, which is the commercial alignment and pushing up.

Lauren Rabbitte

Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's really crucial to understand the differences so that you can work with SMEs and larger corporations effectively. So if we touch upon then what should businesses essentially do next? What advice would you have for companies that are being asked sustainability questions, whether that's from their customers, partners, potentially suppliers, but they don't have the evidence structure or maybe even they're lacking the confidence to respond properly?

Jon Wragg

Yeah, my first point is please, please don't just jump to AI. Claude and ChatGPT are great at tidying up and helping you reach word count, but they are not great at spewing out the correct answers, especially scorable answers. Trust me, as somebody who sees a lot of tenders and tender answers, you can spot them a mile off.

But ultimately, what's my first question? It's actually read what you are being asked and understand the scoring criteria behind it. Not a lot of people do.

They see the terms energy and they see the terms carbon calculation and they just kind of go a little bit fuzzier or they go, oh, well, this means this because we're doing it. My genuine thing is you'll be very good at understanding the rough price point you need to be. As a business, especially if you're a manufacturer or supplier, you'll also be very good at talking about the quality or warranty around your business.

You've done that because that's part of your business growth and how you've built your business and what you actually supply. The sustainability side of it is a specialist area. Now, not every sustainability consultant out there is commercial.

They're really good at getting you to a place and providing you the evidence. But what they're not always good at is telling you how to answer that question correctly. And this is not just us, there's multiple ones.

It's do not be afraid to ask for help. Not every consultant is going to charge you a retainer fee and charge you masses of money for actually having just a quick help. It might just be a 90-minute education session, a 60-minute training session to actually go, this is what it is, this is what it works.

And that's why, I mean, if you take Reset Connect, the event, for example, since Reset Connect South, we now work with quite a lot of other sustainability consultants because they realise that we're not there to compete with them, we're there to help them. So actually, just reach out and just say, look, we're currently supplying or we want to supply this. We didn't realise this was going to be scored.

Can you help us answer? I guarantee you that you'll be shocked at how little that'll cost based on the ROI that that actually gives you. If it's going to help you win a tender, well, you'd probably use a tender writer.

But why not reach out to a sustainability professional as well? It's one of those things, it's just ask for help. If you don't understand it, ask.

Ask somebody. It may not actually cost you any money just to ask, okay? Ask your sustainability consultant.

Ask your sustainability lead. Bring them into the sales discussion because they may see it from a different side to your sales teams. One of the most successful businesses that I've ever worked in, when a tender came in, the different scoring criteria went to the different departments.

And then it was one person's job to pull them together because we were all targeted on different things. The sustainability side of it fell down to me and my team. The quality fell down to, and the quality and compliance team, fell to the compliance and manufacturing teams to explain it better.

And then the pricing and the sales side went to the sales director. And they were incredible. And I mean over 97% success rate on tenders.

It's very effective, yeah. It's very effective because what is a tender? Well, they're asking you different sections and different specialities.

So treat it like that. Please, please treat it like that. And I promise you, you will have success.

Lauren Rabbitte

Yeah, I think that's a really important point, Jonathan, because I know a lot of organisations that I've worked with in the past that have gone in for tenders, and it's down to their bid team to just write it as best as possible without any input, even from the salesperson that supposedly, A, initiated the deal, and B, is going to close the deal. And I have seen time and time again where the salesperson has handed the piece of paper to learn some form of a spiel from it to go in and close it, and the bid team's done the work. But you're totally right.

They're not an expert in every single area. They may have an interest in one of those areas, and the team isn't built up of different interests. It's each individual doing the same task for different tender bids.

So I think that's a really important point to point out. And I think progressing on for that, I'd like to then ask you, what is it businesses are being asked specifically about sustainability now? Maybe they weren't being asked, let's say, two or three years ago?

Jon Wragg

Yeah, you can see that shift straight away. And I think it's also the follow-up questions that they definitely weren't being asked, not even two, three years ago, even 18 months ago, even 12 months ago in many circumstances. I literally, this week, I've lost track of days, it's Wednesday.

But on Monday, I got sent a tender from a client of ours. And all of a sudden, and they've supplied this client many times over the past few years, all of a sudden, the sustainability questions are now 30%, which previously they were 3% to 5%. And they've written in that tender, very simply, that as an organisation, they're a technically public procurement, they're in the education sector, they have switched from MAT to MEAT.

So they have gone from most advantageous tender scoring to most environmentally advantageous tender scoring, which aligns with certain procurement rules now. Okay, so to do that jump, and if you look at previous tenders that they sent, the questions that they're asking aren't actually different. They're still asking about, can you talk to us about your carbon footprint?

Can you talk to us about energy management system? Can you talk to us about a take back scheme for recycled products that they're selling? All of these things, but what they're now asking under pretty much every question is, can you prove it?

Can you attach the certification? Can you attach the evidence that shows not only do you do this, but a case study of where you've done this before? Can you attach somebody that we can contact where you've done this successfully in the past?

Can you show us what you were paying previously? Not even money, but what was your kilowatts per hour for your manufacturing site 18 months ago? What is it now?

If you're saying you're reducing energy, can you prove it? Now, in this case, they're able to do that because it's part of the carbon report that we've helped create. And they can actually show like for like year on year, 24, 25, 26, and what's going to be beyond.

And that's what those documents are really good at. But not only can they show those documents, they can now show what page is relevant and what section of what page is relevant. Because no scorer is ultimately going to read a 50, 60 page document.

They're not. Guide them in the right place to where it is. What that will actually do is pretty much guarantee them that they're going to get a high score in that 30%.

I'll never guarantee full marks because there's always something, but actually it'll score them quite highly. But if that's written by a specialist and scored very highly, even if it's 5% to 10%, guys, think about what that does to the other areas. You might not need to be the cheapest.

You might not need to offer a ridiculous extended warranty that you know you can't do. You may not need to meet some of the other criteria. You can actually be a few percentage marks more expensive than your competitor if you beat them in that area.

And that's where I like to see the switches come. And that's there. It's available for everybody.

You can see it in the tenders that are out there. But what's really important right now is it's not just public procurement. Private procurement is also going down that way as well.

So we'll ask you a question and it'll more than likely ask you to provide the evidence to back up that question, whether that is an accreditation, a piece of work, a case study or something else that they can actually prove it. They don't just want the words. They want the proof and they want you to link it by showing which means what to you in this case.

Lauren Rabbitte

Yeah, no, it's brilliant to understand more about that, Jonathan, and touch upon those important aspects. Now, I can see we've had a few questions come in, actually, on the Q&A as you've been talking. So that's great.

Before we jump on to that, I do want to touch upon why so many businesses, I guess, still struggle to turn sustainability into something commercially useful. And with your previous role and, I guess, your career to date, Jonathan, you've seen a lot of businesses, perhaps on the larger corporation side, where sustainability is pushed down the priority list.

Jon Wragg

Always.

Lauren Rabbitte

Yeah. So is there a persuasion? How do those businesses, whether they're a larger corporation or an SME, essentially understand the concept of sustainability and turning that into something commercially viable and convincing others to buy into that?

Jon Wragg

Yeah, I think there's a few things here. I think, okay, I'm not definitely 100% I'm not, and I said I wouldn't, and I'm not going to do on any other webinar that I'm on recently. I'm definitely not going to bring politics into it.

But if you take boardroom politics, ultimately, as a corporation, what are they there to do? They're there to either look after their shareholders and they're there to make sure that their business has longevity. Well, sustainability has a voice to play.

Now, I'm very, very lucky, and I'm also very rare, that for a long time now, I've either had a direct voice or I've had a direct line manager who's had a voice to senior decision makers and board members. So therefore, obviously, I'm not the smallest, and obviously, I'm usually the loudest in the room. But beside all that, I can usually link it to, like I said, I've always positioned myself between sales and procurement.

I've always seen sustainability as that go between, how can we help sales sell more with the work that we do in sustainability? What you've actually got to show, and the world has changed massively. I think it's not that sustainability has changed.

I think what's happened is sustainability has grown up. Sustainability, it's not about sustainability's had to learn the language of finance. It's actually, and we now talk about ROI a lot more and things like that.

We've actually learned the language of alignment. So instead of just being the offshoot of a business and a part of a business that you do some good and you get given a budget every year, well, what a lot of senior leaders and really successful chief sustainability officers and senior leadership teams do now is link it to new business direction, who you're going to go after and can we help with that? Can we help you align to those targets?

And also procurement, can we help you save money? And also operations, can we help you save money? Therefore, ultimately increasing the EBITDA of a business.

Sustainability is really good at that so long as it has a voice. So what you've actually seen is sustainability people have actually not only increased their knowledge but increased their corporate level of understanding. They've gone from junior teams to senior leadership positions.

Actually, they have more voice. So therefore, they can actually link it to more increases. But in a small business, they don't have that luxury because a senior sustainability person is quite expensive.

They can be. And if they go out to the market and they go out to the type of market that unfortunately it's been, there's a lot of waffle. There's a lot of businesses who do some great reporting.

They talk a lot of fluff. They're really good at talking pretty stuff. But they're asking the wrong questions.

They're not asking about your growth potential in the next two, three to five years. They're not asking as a business, where do you see yourself? What are your big targets?

So actually, why is it complicated? People have been given the wrong information. Ultimately as well, people take what they see as personal sustainability.

So they may be really good at home at buying the right products and reducing what they buy and recycling at home. And then they try and bring that into a business environment. And it just doesn't fly because business recycling schemes are expensive.

Getting everybody to do it correctly is expensive. You can only put up so many signs in the canteen, for example, before you sound like you're actually preaching. It's always about linking it to the business model.

And not a lot of sustainability people over the years have always done that. They've either focused on the product. Great, they've made a more sustainable product, but they've not made a more sustainable business.

Or they've tried to be too preachy about it. And I kind of sit in the middle personally. So yes, personally and politically and what I do and how I recycle at home, they're my views.

What I'd never do is bring that into the office, apart from circumstances where I've said a voice and we shouldn't be going after that client, for example. But I've always tried to say, okay, that's not possible. If I need X amount of pounds or euros to be able to do this project, well, that money is not going to come out of thin air.

So how do I link it to sales to take some of their money and new business? How do I link it to savings and procurement and organisation and operational businesses? If I'm saving their money, can I have some of that money to do some good and use it in impact?

And I think that's what businesses have always struggled to do until recently.

Lauren Rabbitte

No, it's interesting. And you're totally right. You can bring your opinions into the office and that's different as to how recycling metrics are done or recycling practices because it is so expensive, which is a whole different topic.

Jon Wragg

Yeah. Not a lot of sustainability people understand the contracts that their company is in for energy, for example. They may be screaming from the rooftops that we need to have solar panels or we need to switch to a renewable energy tariff without asking the question, are we in contract with our current supplier? Can we actually afford solar panels?

Are there any grants available to us as a business through our local universities or local authorities or whatever that is in sustainability schemes? There's a lot of talk that happens, but it's about actually making it commercial and actually improving the business. If you do it right, you'll always create an ROI from sustainability and you'll always link it to business growth if it's done right and done sensibly.

Lauren Rabbitte

Yeah. No, absolutely. That's brilliant to hear.

So I was going to move on to ask you a specific question, but it actually looks like somebody's asked very similar what I had drafted. So we have a great question from Fabiola regarding for small businesses. With a small business that has limited resources, what would you say are the first three sustainability actions you would recommend for them to take?

Jon Wragg

Yeah, I think there's got to be some. I think it's sustainability people love low-hanging fruit and there's not a sustainability person who would go into a business and not instantly identify low-hanging fruit. But actually, even if you just, as a small business, my biggest recommendation straight away is sign up to the SME Climate Hub.

It's free. It's a wonderful initiative and there are amazing educational tools there. So if you are not sustainability educated, you don't have a degree in environmental science or whatever, you have gone into a business, it doesn't matter whether you are in charge of marketing, admin, whatever, but sustainability has now fallen on you.

Genuinely, my advice is utilise the educational tools around you. Sign up to as many free educational webinars as you can. Sign up to SME Climate Hub.

Sign up to these things that give you free... Also, there's other things through the UN, UN Global Compact Network and other things, and actually utilise that. Also, utilise your local chamber of commerce.

As a business, as a small business, there's a really good chance that you're part of a local federation, you're part of an industry group, you're part of a chamber of commerce. Utilise those educational tools and where you can, show your bosses why you want to do this. Not about personal development, but what you want to do with your business and how it will lead to actually improving the business going forward.

Maybe even draft those people that aren't interested. Draft the finance people into this. Draft the sustainability people into this.

It doesn't matter if you're a two-man band or a multinational. Everything starts with education and understanding what you can do. And then from that, you will find low-hanging fruit.

But I'm not about to say change your bulbs to LED bulbs. You should do these simple things because actually your business might not have that. You might have rented premises.

You might not have control of your energy source. I'm not going to say switch from diesel to electric cars because each business is completely unique and each business has to do what's best for them. My personal thing, it's not three things, it's start with educating yourself on what you can possibly do and track it.

If you do something, track it, even if it's a simple, we had this, we did this, and it did this. So that's X, Y, and Z. And it works.

And we're going to continue doing this because actually it's not cost the business any money, but ultimately it makes us a more sustainable business. They're really good starting points. So once again, SME Climate Hub.

Not a lot of people know about it, but please sign up. It's an unbelievable educational tool.

Lauren Rabbitte

Yeah, I mean, that's great to hear. And it's a great pointer to education, actually, because a lot of people don't use education enough after they've simply gone to university or left college. The lack of further education is quite, I guess, alarming.

And resources like that exist for a reason. So that's great to hear. And I think that is definitely a direction that people should be pointed in.

So from a larger corporation perspective with a business that is looking to demonstrate they potentially might be new to sustainability or they're trying to prove that they are more sustainable, how can they ensure that their efforts are genuine and that they're not actually greenwashing?

Jon Wragg

That's a really good question. Okay, so if you are a corporation, and I think the problem also is that the term SME is bandied around a lot. Well, what do we mean by that?

Well, there's lots in there. It's 5 million businesses in the UK. And when we talk about corporation, what do you mean?

If you're of a certain size and you're not doing it, good God, people, what are you doing? Your investors should be asking. You are not meeting the requirements legally that you need to by EU and UK legislation.

You should be doing it. So actually, I'm going to count those out because they should be doing the bare minimum.

Lauren Rabbitte

Yeah.

Jon Wragg

When you're a small or large business, so let's talk about that kind of 50 to 100 million pound business, and you want to then take the next step, and you've been going, you're an established business, but you want to make that next jump. Well, actually, what you've got to think about is, A, the compliance and understanding where the compliance is going. But to alleviate greenwashing, that is really tricky because you've got your internal greenwashing and you've got your external greenwashing, and then you've got product and then you've got business.

Once again, though, it has to start with education. It does. It has to be education of your sales teams.

It has to be education of your marketing teams. If you have an in-house sustainability team, they must have direct access to your sustainability teams, sorry, to your sales teams and your marketing teams. They must do.

And quite simply, the reason for that is so that marketing can say the right things and sales can say the right things because the last thing you want to do is then over-promise and under-deliver. That's commercial suicide. We all know that.

But ultimately, sustainability now is a hot topic. If you've got an amazing product that is sustainable, don't just let a sales team go wild with it by giving them a fact sheet. Make sure they're up to date.

Make sure they understand why. Make sure why you've done that work. Why it's impactful.

So they can talk about it in the best way. That will create a USP and do these things. So actually, when you're saying a large business and alleviate greenwashing, but there are other organisations out there.

So there's the Anti-Greenwash Charter, there is a, I will shout about their positivity all day long, and then from that, there's also TrueMark.

So if your concern is that you may be greenwashing and you don't want to talk about it, or actually you're doing the other thing, greenhushing, you want to talk about the green work you're doing, but you're scared to because you're actually keeping it quiet. Organisations like the Anti-Greenwash Charter and TrueMark are an unbelievable place to start and actually get them to actually look at your stuff and educate you on that. Because they are real specialists in external communication of green claims.

Lauren Rabbitte

Yeah, that's, again, some great resources there, Jonathan. And I appreciate you providing that for people. It's something I've seen throughout my career is significant greenwashing.

And almost to the extent that the marketing team doesn't quite understand. Yeah, yeah. And I think it could be another mistake.

Jon Wragg

Yeah, well, I was just about to say that. I can say that, look, there's some greenwashing that we can all spot a mile off and it's done on purpose and it's meant to deceive. I think if you look at some businesses, they've come away from their jumping on a bandwagon and stuff like that.

That's kind of moved on now. We've seen some results. But it's still prevalent.

But a lot of greenwashing is accidental. They have something good and they want to shout about it or talk about it and they're just doing it in the wrong word because they're using the wrong buzzwords. AI is terrible for that.

AI is terrible at pulling in buzzwords from other sources that aren't legit. But also trying to link you to legislations that either have changed or don't exist or are outdated or it's just not right in what they're saying. My advice, like all my advice through this is please don't be in your own box, okay?

The best advice you can do is utilise your network. It is ask for help. Not all help comes at a cost.

Some does and that's why you need them to speak about do we have the budget for this and can we go forward. But genuinely just asking a question should never actually cost you any money. It should be there because companies like me, that's how we get our work.

We're there to help. But initially, we need to know what can we help with. We're not just going to offer a blanket approach to every company because it's different.

Those that do, they're not that good. But if they're actually tailoring, understanding, can they help in any way, is there a specific way that you need help? It's not just us, there's lots of us out there.

We're there to help. And we're there to help businesses be more sustainable. The best way to do that is link it to commerciality and make them more commercial.

Lauren Rabbitte

Yeah, brilliant, brilliant to hear. And I think then, Jonathan, if we come to a, I guess a final point, a final discussion topic, it's been absolutely brilliant and quite fascinating actually to hear all the different elements to the work that you do. I'd like to end on then, where does Ltt Group fit into this and how, we've spoken a lot about SMEs, so how can supply chain companies, for example, use sustainability to win more work?

Jon Wragg

Yeah, yeah, very simply. One thing I can say is it will not be instant. If anybody's offering you an instant solution, it's not going to be great.

Yeah, it's not going to be instant. So it has to come with a little bit of foresight. And that's why, for all want and will in the world, most of our clients have either lost a client and therefore they're coming to us to say, we can't lose anymore, we didn't understand this was scorable, or they've had something land that they have had in their plan for a while to go for, they've gone for it, and then lo and behold, sustainable is now a key criteria that they didn't think was, because it was never discussed at the sales stage or discussion stage. Foresight is an unbelievable thing.

But I have a saying, and it's not that PC, but I will always say it with regards to this. When you come to supply chain, if you think, and you're a supply chain provider, if you think that sustainability is sh**, then sh** rolls downhill and you will get swept up in it, whether you want to or not. If you do not want to supply these companies that are under the legislation and pushing for this, then don't be more sustainable.

I will never ask you to be more sustainable for the sake of being more sustainable. If you want to grow, have targeted businesses, and these are large businesses and big brands, I'm guaranteeing you now that they are going to ask you not only sustainability questions on your product, which will actually be the lowest scoring criteria, but as a business, are you making an impact, whether that is reducing your environmental impact or increasing your social impact? And more importantly, do you have the G in ESG, the governance, to back it up?

Is it from top down? Do you have the right management systems? And do you have the accreditations to back up your ambition and what you say?

If the answer is no, I'd love to help. Not only me, but our industry, the sustainable consulting industry would love to help because that's what we do. If you don't want to do that, and quite frankly, you won't be supplying these businesses, it's not a threat, it is a promise.

That is how procurement now looks and sustainability is becoming more and more and more important. It may be worded slightly differently, but that's because these big businesses are under increased legislation to reduce their footprint and you are their footprint if you're a supplier.

Lauren Rabbitte

No, that's brilliant, Jonathan. And I think the different perspectives, the case study example and education resources you've shared today has been extremely helpful for the audience and we greatly appreciate that. I think just one final point there that you touched upon, not understanding the G in ESG.

And I think it's something that's quite strong at the moment is there's a lack of understanding entirely about ESG and not through maybe lack of wanting to, but just not asking for help. So it is really important to raise your hand, have that open conversation. Like you've said, it may not cost businesses, or it may cost them, but at least if you open the conversation, if you're interested with the likes of yourself or another consultant, then that's brilliant.

At least the door's open for that.

Jon Wragg

Absolutely. Genuinely. And I'm not just speaking of myself and Ltt, I'm speaking about the industry as a whole.

We genuinely are here to help. We are. There are many of us that have great experience and we are genuinely here to help.

My advice is just ask for it. You would ask a specialist in other areas of your business. Sustainability is a specialism.

Ask for help.

Lauren Rabbitte

Brilliant. No, that's great to hear. Thank you very much, Jonathan, for your time today and for joining us on this education series.

If you missed this webinar, it will be uploaded, the recording, in the next few days. So please keep an eye out for that. If you'd like to re-watch it, it will also be available.

Please stay tuned for the announcement of our next education webinar series. And who knows, you might even see Jonathan again speaking on this series more about ESG and compliance and tenders. So if you do have questions after this webinar, please filter them through to us and we'll make sure that they get to Jonathan.

Perfect. Thank you very much to everybody for joining us today.

Jon Wragg

Thank you.