E065 - April Sotomayor from Investors In The Environment

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Welcome back to the Green Element Podcast, where we feature business leaders and innovators transforming their operations to be more environmentally and socially sustainable. I'm your host, Will Richardson, and I can't wait to meet our guest today and help you on your journey of sustainability. April, welcome to the Green Element Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. You work for a company called Investors in the Environment. You're a certification company that helps organizations become more environmental. Please do let us know more about what it is that you guys are up to.

Okay, great. Thank you for having me on, Will. Investors in the Environment was set up about 10 years ago in 2010 after— we're set up by an environmental charity called PECT. So PECT run sustainability initiatives nationally, but we are based in Peterborough. That's where we started. So our name PECT stands for Peterborough Environment City Trust. But as we've grown as an organization, we've grown in impact and we've grown regionally and then nationally. And throughout our work with businesses, schools, and communities, really target engaging people with meaningful environmental action and also connecting with the natural environment in a number of ways. I work on the business team, and so I lead on the National Accreditation Scheme Investors in the Environment It was set up because we identified a gap in the market for organizations that weren't able to implement ISO 14001 because of cost, because of time, because of understanding and training and ability and capability. So with regard to small to medium enterprises, you know, ISO 14001 for many is not possible, at least to get certification. So IEA was set up to help engage that sort of sector. According to the UK government, about over 90% of businesses in the UK are SMEs. So it's a huge market really to get people involved with impactful initiatives with regard to energy, waste, and a number of other resources. But not only that, making environmental change and sustainability something that is Understandable within people's individual job roles, whatever that might be, whether they are already sustainability professionals. So if they're in a role that's specifically, you know, if they've been recruited because they've got environmental management skills, for example, there's still an opportunity to tell those sustainability stories, which we see larger organizations that do have a professional in place. They usually struggle to kind of talk about that journey and what it means and how other staff feed into that. But then for other businesses that are, you know, doing things from anything from healthcare to veterinary to solicitors, accountants, installers of different technologies, construction, etc., all of these guys usually struggle to find the extra time. to document and implement a certified environmental management system. So that's where we come in. We provide some basic training and knowledge about what to do. We do sort of a gap analysis, but we don't really talk about it in those terms. It's just, what are you doing environmentally? What aren't you doing? What can you do next based on the type of business that you have? So for example, if you're a solicitor and you're primarily office-based, We look at the typical impacts, things like your energy consumption, paper use is a really big one for solicitors, and we start to help them introduce actions that will make them more efficient. And then the other side to that is to get their staff to actively engage with environmental initiatives outside of the business, whether that's tree planting or volunteering with local community groups. but seeing the wider context of sustainability, that it's not just kind of what's in front of you, it's much more beyond that.

Having interviewed a few people that have gone through Investors in the Environment, they hold you in very high regard with what they've learned and how they have gone through the process. Because with ISO 14001, you have the process and then you have someone else certifying you from a UCAS point of view. Are you guys consultancy going through, and then do you certify it yourselves, or how does that all work?

Really good question. Um, so Investors in the Environment is a supported accreditation. Um, so people sign up, we give them the tools and the support to implement things like an environmental policy, start to use some other tools on how to measure and monitor their resources, etc. And usually what happens is over the course of a year is when they start implementing things. By the end of that year, ideally, they'll be able to achieve their first accreditation, and that is through one of our assessors. So it is internal, it's not externally verified, but we do have very clear criteria on what a business has to do to meet that, which is very transparent. And I think businesses really appreciate that as well. So, you know, I'm trained to ISO 14001:2015, And so when I first came to the scheme, I wasn't quite sure how that would work. But for a lot of SMEs, for example, it isn't necessarily the external certification that is the most important thing. It's the actual work. And that's— we stand by that and we stand by the integrity of our system. And it works for a lot of organizations.

I can see that having been in the industry for long enough. I can totally see why it would work. And I think people get scared off by a bit of the ISO 14001 and some of the ISO certifications because of— I guess they probably put them into, oh, only big businesses do that kind of certification. And you've got the process that's on your website that takes you through the environmental policy, and it's actually a really, really good website of how you can go through the process. You're based all over England, aren't you? Are you based in Scotland?

We don't have any representation in Scotland at the moment, but we do have members throughout the UK. For those that are further afield, some of our localised— because we operate with delivery partners across regions in the UK, and so we have stronger representation in some regions than others. So with regard to the membership, that Mainly applies to frequency of meeting or events. So some of the events that we might host, for example, we have quite a lot of events happening in Nottingham and Northeast, in the East region, but fewer events that we lead on elsewhere, in which case we run other events through partners and through promotion. And then the site audits, obviously, then we have to travel out if they're further away from us. But we do, we do support across.

Brilliant. I'm based in Scotland, so I guess that's the reason why I was asking, because I was on the website, I was like, oh, there's no Scottish.

It's really interesting because delivery partners that we work with, they usually have some kind of consultancy in addition to running Investors in the Environment. So they will operate an Investors in the Environment license alongside their other business, and it helps them add value to Well, there you go.

Anyone who's in Scotland who wants to add value to their business, sign up and talk to April, I guess.

Yeah, absolutely.

What would you say your business superpower was?

Our business superpower is engaging in a very practical, on-the-ground way We know our customers. We have a really good relationship with our members. We have regular contact with them, which helps us understand their business. We collaborate with them. So it's not just, you know, we do an assessment or an audit, environmental audit, and say, okay, you're doing this, that, and the other wrong. Here's a list of corrective actions needed. We do a bit of that, but then we say, we can help you by here's this tool. for example, you need to really look at some kind of compliance or legal— have a legal register, for example. This is how you go about doing that. Perhaps in-house they don't have that training or knowledge, so we work with them to develop that, also signpost them to other services or resources that could help support that. But other things like the community link, so being run by an environmental charity, we already operate quite strongly across a whole host of other sustainability areas. So we've got strong contacts with schools. We run— PACT runs an Eco Charter, which is a national scheme for schools to make environmental improvements to the school and with the kids and trying to add environmental projects into their curriculum alongside the curriculum. So it's not something extra teachers have to do. But making it so it's not just a bunch of tick boxes. Again, I think having that grassroots origin also helps us to get people to tell their stories. And that's, for me, I think one of the most important things right now about becoming a more sustainable society is people talking about what they're doing, talking about where they're struggling, talking about what maybe hasn't worked so well. And but what really has worked well or what small things that they can do. So we are promoting— there's a National Zero Waste Week happening the first week of September, and we've developed a lot of resources to help our membership run campaigns around Zero Waste Week, whether that's doing waste audits or doing, you know, print-free day or having an office lunch to reduce packaging brought into the office. But the whole thing is just Doing something, taking some kind of action. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it should be something. And then once a business gets going putting forth a small action, there's a snowball effect. They get excited, they feel energized by it, they get excellent feedback, their business enjoys improved reputation, and then they want to do more and they get quite excited about what they can do next. As far as business superpower, I think that's one of the things, is that connection.

Brilliant. What got you into the environmental world? What's your background? You're clearly not British, well, unless you've picked up your accent from watching movies, I don't know. What's your story and how did you come into the environmental world?

Well, back in school I had an amazing teacher that took us out. He was our biology teacher and he would take us out to our local river and we would do water quality samplings. We would sample some of the invertebrates to test the quality of the water. And I absolutely loved that. I found that so interesting. I later entered a different career field. I was a linguist and an analyst, and I always wanted to do— go back to science. So as I was leaving that field, I was looking for what to do. And I joined the Sierra Club, which is a US organization that promotes the natural environment and protecting the natural environment. And they had a number of links on their website. And I followed one of them for a training. It was like a citizen science training for water quality, which is something, you know, what I had done at school. And long story short, I became a certified assessor. I started leading groups in some different waterways, doing waterways cleanups as well, city waterways cleanups. And then it just kind of grew from there. And I always wanted to— I thought eventually I would work in policy, environmental policy. But I found that working directly with organizations and seeing changes and making those connections was really powerful. which is what drew me to PECT. So I've been at PECT for about 5 years now, and I just find that quite impactful. And I find that what you can do on a local level can leverage, like, big changes.

Working in the environmental world in the UK, and you— I would imagine you go back to North America to visit family and stuff. I mean, is there a fundamental difference between the two? Because You see an awful lot of environmentalism, I guess, but stuff going on environmentally in the US and Canada that's not necessarily reported on, but when you're in the industry, you understand what is going on. Where do you see— because you must see a difference, or you may not see a difference, I don't know.

What do you mean, like politically or on the ground?

No, forget about the current president. I'm not— I'm honestly not I'm just curious because what I've noticed is different cultures have different things going on environmentally and also different drivers. I mean, you see this within Europe with Germany and with France, and we've all picked up— so Germany was very, very, very quick to pick up on waste and to recycle, reduce, and ensure that the waste within Germany was sorted out. I mean, they were doing it in the '80s and they had good recycling schemes then. which in the UK, we were so far behind on that kind of front, but we were quite ahead on energy. And I'm just wondering what differences you see between North America and the UK and whether you've picked up on anything that's going on in the US and that isn't going on over here. Just more out of curiosity, really.

Yeah, it is. I mean, it's different. The US is huge in comparison. I grew up in California and there's a really strong culture of environmentalism there. For example, recycling has never— I've never not recycled. It's always been really important. It's always been, you know, recycling, you segregate it to such an extent that when I was growing up in California, me and my brothers, to make some extra cash, would go to our neighbors, knocking on our neighbors' doors, asking for their cans, their aluminum cans, and then we would take them to the recycling center and get money for it. So it's a little enterprise for us. So it had value. And you just— I think, you know, I grew up having a lot of contact with the outdoors as well. So I think that's really important and that gets you to value the environment, which is obviously why it's so important to get people connecting with nature so that they feel it's important to protect it. But as far as You know, the difference is, it's difficult because I really developed here from an environmental sustainability professional, not there. I was having a different career when I lived there. But it seems like similar things are happening, but each state in the US is very different on how it's run. So while California is quite advanced, there are some that aren't. So it's tricky. Yeah, I do read up on it. I do look at what's happening there. You know, recently, You know, how people are looking at offsetting their carbon emissions. And, um, you know, it's just, it's just massively different, Will. It's really hard to compare, I think, without having the data.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. I think it's— I mean, it's the, it's the renewables. Say, for example, what's going on in Texas with renewables and how progressive they are with renewables with a history in oil, and they've completely flipped To being massive renewable state, and I love it. I just I love you can you can tell I used to live in the U.S. and I love I actually really enjoy the U.S. and I think there's so much positive stuff that comes out of it, and I just get I get really annoyed when people go oh yeah this is really bad. Well actually why don't we focus on the good stuff that's happening? Don't necessarily only focus on the bad stuff because actually you know 100 percent and you know I think.

Our next real thing as people working in sustainability is helping people see what a future, what a sustainable future looks like. And I think there's a real lack of vision in that area. There's a lot of stuff happening. There are positive things happening, but there is quite a lot of negative press. And, you know, the shocking climate science out there is right in, you know, talking about that side of things. But we have to know as human beings, we have to know what we need to be working towards, and we have to be able to see what we're working towards. And I think that's kind of our role, maybe, is helping people, helping businesses, helping whomever we're working with see what can be achieved and what that would look like in the future.

Yeah, I think that— yeah, I totally agree with that. It's that cohesiveness, and that's one of the reasons why we set up this podcast, was for exactly that, to understand what is going on around and to learn from each other and to not concentrate on the bad stuff. I remember having a talk with a friend of mine who was a journalist back in 2004, 2005, and she'd just written an article about how wind turbines were bad for birds. They were really, you know, basically the whole article was saying how bad wind turbines were. And it was Around about 2005, there were quite a lot of articles about that, and it was because most people saw wind turbines as a whole as good things. So the newspapers were going, well, if that's the case, then if we write loads of bad stuff, then they'll buy our newspapers. It was just— I don't know, I got really— I actually got really kind of upset with the whole thing. And because that's not going to help us environmentally and mitigate climate change and reduce our environmental impact if all we can do is concentrate on all the negative stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

It just doesn't make sense to me, which is why I love what you guys are doing and listening to you and what you're doing at Investors in the Environment, because you're— it's almost crowdsourcing, isn't it? And pulling stuff together so that everyone learns off each other, and you've got a system that people can go through, because not everyone goes through one. We don't all think the same, you know, we don't all go through that one particular way. And your way will fit a number of people, and that way will fit a number of people, and so therefore you've got all these different people ultimately serving the same goal, reducing your environmental organization's environmental impact.

Yeah, absolutely.

How do you engage your suppliers and customers and staff with environmental management?

You mean current members or prospective members?

In this instance, it would be— I'd probably more focus on members because it'll be interesting to know how you engage that messaging across.

Well, we have our core criteria are, you know, environmental policy, looking at what the organization is doing, and their policy will have to be robust enough that we can follow it through their business operations into how they're measuring and managing their resources. We help them to set targets against resources, so using them efficiently. So reducing, and wherever possible, you know, if the business is growing, making sure that it's per person or per pound spent, that that resource is being used responsibly. And then we have, in terms of engagement, the most engaging aspect is through environmental projects, which are part of the backbone of our criteria. So to get green level, you have to engage with at least 3 environmental projects significance. And we have a matrix that we help businesses to use to help them plan their projects and understand significance. And they follow 3 key areas, which are resource efficiency. So, for example, you know, doing an LED replacement project, you know, getting some quotes in or getting some grant funding in and, you know, overhauling your LED or your lighting system, which can have quite a significant carbon reduction effect. And then another element would be doing habitat or conservation projects, projects that support biodiversity and enhancement of the natural environment. So that could be carbon offsetting, it could be getting your staff out for tree planting days, could be setting aside some land for biodiversity, whether that's like a wildflower meadow, for example, if a business has a patch of land that they could plant some wildflowers on. And then the last element is sort of social community and well-being projects. So those areas, you know, help a business start to look inward, look at how they're treating their workers, looking at, you know, obviously if you are trying to protect the environment, feel compassion toward the environment, it's natural for you to feel compassion towards those working for you and with you. So projects in that area could be anything from You know, having staff lunches. One of our businesses I was working with this week, they subsidize massages for their staff. I think monthly on a Friday they have someone come in and they can get, you know, book in a subsidized massage for during their lunch break. Little things like that, or looking at, you know, their family-friendly policies or any number of things. It's, it's not prescriptive, but we look help them kind of frame it in this way so that they can see, you know, within the scope of their business. You know, if it's a very small business, they're not going to have the resources necessarily to invest in, you know, some of the bigger projects or bigger things, but they can probably treat their workers well or better or look at ways to improve. And so that counts as well. And so each year they have to improve against all of these criteria and they have to be able to demonstrate On the resources, it's data-driven, so they measure their resources. So we can see, yes, there's been at least a 2% improvement. And now we'll start looking at science-based targets for carbon especially. And then looking at sort of feedback. So if they're running projects in the community, what feedback has there been from that? What's the scale? So if it's a bigger business, we would want to see that scaled to kind of the scope of what that business is able to achieve, kind of helping to lead them on that and provide some guidance. So, that's— those are sort of the primary engagement areas. And actually, there's one more I haven't mentioned, which is the communication. So, that's both internal and external. So, I mentioned it before, it's so important for them to talk about their journey. You know, absolutely brilliant for facilities management to get all their resources running and taking over very efficiently. Their building management system is working really well, but they have to get everybody involved, involve every layer in something. If it's not in resource efficiency, then they can do it in some of those other areas like the environmental protection or the wellbeing or community aspect of things. Um, so by telling those stories, both through whether it's newsletters or through team meetings or toolbox talks to, you know, tradespeople out on a site to telling that story on their website and on social media is so important. And with small businesses in particular, a lot of them don't take advantage of that as much because, you know, everybody's so busy. Everybody's busy. But in order to influence and change the culture and make some real changes, talking about those journeys is really, really important.

Brilliant. It sounds like it's a very practical way of going through. And so knowing £14 a month, it's much more about kind of, this is the structure and there's no— but you've actually got practical points that you expect people to go through, which knowing what we do would be very useful and very, very helpful.

Yeah.

That's really cool.

Absolutely. I mean, we don't want environmental management to be a barrier because you're trying to follow a rigid framework. So one of the things, like with the monitoring of resources, we look carefully at what the business does. If it's not— if they're not able to monitor something initially, fine, we'll move on for that. We'll set that aside for now. We'll start doing what we can and get you on that ladder to improvement. But I think getting that— getting those first key actions in, it needs to happen or it might not happen. You see what I mean? So there's a barrier. We're trying to remove barriers. to enable people to actually move forward with some really important changes.

April, how do we learn more about you guys and where can we— all the links will be on the website, but how can we learn more about what it is that you guys do?

Sure, so our website is www.iie.uk.com. We're on social media, on Facebook, goodness me, I think it's /InvestorsInTheEnvironment. On Twitter, we're @IAEUK. Yeah, you can follow us in those places. We're pretty active. We'd like to shout out about our members as well when they've been doing good things. We've got a green directory for our members that some elect to go on. Some offer member-to-member discounts, for example, for some of their services. But yeah, we also have an IAE mentor scheme, so we connect our members to each other so they can have those conversations that are quite important, like, how did you do this? How did you manage to do that? Because we run events, but businesses are busy doing the business that they're in. So often they can't get away from work to come to a non-work-related event. So that's why we came up with our mentor scheme. So we make introductions between members. So obviously myself and other advisors within the team will be working closely with businesses and they'll understand, ooh, you've got a problem that I've seen this other business solve in a really interesting way. And then we'll say, you know, between them, are you happy for us to make an introduction? You guys can have a chat about how it went. We can give them sort of the Cliff Notes, but having that conversation and having that networking capability is really important. And you can find out about that by emailing us, and we can give you some more details. But we also run— we promote some national events as well, and we have a variety of campaigns and resources that we promote. So you can find all of that on our social media as well. You can find out if you're interested and you go to our website, you can sign up to our newsletter and that will keep you posted on upcoming happenings.

Great, brilliant. Thank you very much for today. Thank you for letting us know about Investors in the Environment, what it is that you guys are doing. And hopefully on the back of this, people will go, hmm, that sounds really interesting. I want to become more environmental. I'm going to go onto your website and Sign up. So thank you for teaching us.

Thanks very much, Will.

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