Charlie Wyman and Will Richardson, CEO of Green Element, launch a podcast about sustainable business. Green Element helps companies measure environmental impact through a lean model, earned B Corp certification, and once completed a law firm project in fewer hours than estimated, leading to repeat business.
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Welcome to the Green Element Podcast, where business and sustainability come together. Hi, this is— I'm Charlie Wyman, working with Green Element, and I'm here with William Richardson, CEO and founder of Green Element. Hey, Will.
Hi there. Hi, how you doing?
Awesome. So we're— this is the kickoff interview for our new podcast, and we just thought we'd talk about, you know, why we want to do this podcast and what we hope to achieve by doing it.
So one of the reasons why I set up Green Element was to help more businesses understand the benefits and to be able to enable them to become more environmental and more sustainable as a whole. I guess it goes down to the whole lean business model and understanding exactly what your impacts are of your business across all natures, all nature of your business.
Awesome. So we'll talk about B Corp and B Corporation quite a lot throughout this podcast, and we've got some great interviews lined up with certified B Corps. So can you tell us a little bit about B Corp and why Green Element is a certified B Corp?
So Green Element became a certified B Corp, if I'm being honest, because a client of ours asked us to be as their sustainability and environmental management consultants, but when I looked into it, I realized that it was a— it just fitted exactly what it is that we do. We look after our staff, or I take pride in the fact we look after our staff. We, you know, we have one day a month to a charity of your choice. We, um, our clients believe and trust who we are. For example, we worked for a large international law firm recently, and we were given— or I'd worked out it was going to take, I think, 250 hours to do this project, and actually it ended up at 190 hours because we were good and lean. But I couldn't help myself when the client asked me and said, how many hours did you actually take? Because I'm just curious. And I told her the truth. And I felt a bit guilty. So I said, and I know that they're earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a day, this company, and we're a very small business. But I said, look, I'll tell you what, we did do it more efficiently than I expected. It was a complete cost of the project. So I said to them, look, we'll do another project for you. And she said, brilliant. Okay, that's really, really kind. We did another project and now we've just been appointed. Well, Well, hopefully. We're literally waiting for the contract in the last couple of— next couple of days, but appointed for the next 6 months in-house. So, and apparently that was a part of it. So doing good for business and being honest and helpful can actually pay off as well as making yourself feel better about doing your business sustainably.
Fantastic. So who are we aiming this podcast at? Tell us a little bit about that.
Business owners, senior managers, anyone really committed to helping their organization become more sustainable, and I mean really you, you could be at any point in the business, you could be someone that's really, really interested in sustainability and helping your organization become more ethical, more green, more sustainable, more corporately responsible, but— and therefore you can try and change from within your organization, or you could be a senior manager or an owner of a business trying to change the way that your business works, and we'll have some really exciting People that will help you in that process, to give you examples of exactly what it is that they did, why they're doing it as well.
And that leads me nicely on to the next question, which is like,
