Restoring Nature for Businesses
Are you a business in Derbyshire looking to make positive change for wildlife? Read on or reach out to us at Wildsolutions@derbyshirewt.co.uk to find out more about how you can help.
Whilst major corporations, landowners, and governments have a substantial role in restoring the ecosystem, we all have a part to play in nature’s recovery, whether by taking sustainable steps in our personal lives or through our work.
Local businesses often contact us to ask how they can positively impact their surrounding landscape and community. As a local grassroots organisation and the only organisation solely committed to nature recovery in Derbyshire, we are perfectly placed to support you in making the right choices.
Why is biodiversity important for businesses?
All businesses, large or small, are impacted by the biodiversity and climate crisis and must act now for nature. But why should businesses take action? And why is local action the right choice? There are numerous considerations including:
Meeting government or overhead goals: Many companies have biodiversity or climate-related targets set out externally through government initiatives, or internally by overhead goals. This might be offsetting your carbon emissions or restoring biodiversity lost through expansion or production.
Social Value: Building relationships with your surrounding community and integrating positive social value is important for any company's ethos. Biodiversity and nature projects are often a great way to meet these goals.
Ecosystem Services: A healthy, functioning ecosystem can provide us with numerous benefits, many of which have a positive impact on the stability of a business. A key example is reducing flood risk. By acting locally to mitigate against flooding, you can help protect your future business.
Staff wellbeing and attracting talent: The positive impacts of increased access to nature on mental health is now widely documented. Creating spaces and activities for staff can support the wellbeing of the team. Sustainability and social value can also make an employer more appealing to employees and possible clients.
Branding, reputation and revenue: Sustainability can have positive direct impacts on ongoing costs and attracting new clients due to the positive public view of environmental sustainability and biodiversity.
What can you do?
Companies have a financial, ethical, and moral responsibility to restore nature, but knowing how to achieve this can be a daunting task. Taking the right steps will often have upfront costs, however, this is a positive long-term investment, helping to futureproof the company and the community they impact. Companies often set out to meet their goals and mitigate their impact by donating to overseas charities or conservation projects. However, as a local grassroots organisation, we feel that to have a real, tangible impact and maintain high integrity, direct local action is of great value.
Here are some tips to get you started:
Outside space: Planters, green walls, or even just keeping ‘weeds’, are just some ways to host native plants. By starting with native plants, you can increase the diversity and number of many different groups, as the plants attract native insects, which then attract bats and insectivorous birds.
Ethical Resourcing: Minimising the use of resources is a good start – basic things like turning off lights and turning down thermostats when the office is not in use or reducing consumption of paper and single-use plastic. Choose ethical, sustainable suppliers, where plastics are minimised throughout the chain, and paper is from recycled sources and sustainable forestry. Avoid suppliers which have huge environmental footprints and those which take little social responsibility, and instead choose smaller, more local vendors.
Pensions and Banking: Now that all businesses must invest in a pension scheme for their employees, it is important to ensure that the pension scheme is an ethical one. Many pensions, banks and investments support fossil fuel extraction and deforestation, among other unethical practices. Ethical banks refuse to fund projects and businesses which cause social or environmental harm and can be certified by accountability bodies.
Social Responsibility: A healthy natural world can only be supported by healthy, happy people who know and care about it. Encourage your employees to take time out in nature, be mindful, and appreciate the green spaces near their homes and workplaces. Creating a ‘nature spot’ brings beauty and joy into your working environment. Investing in volunteer days, where an employee spends a normal workday volunteering to a charity, can help to foster environmental and industry links as well as improve the physical and mental wellbeing of the employee.
We have worked alongside many businesses in Derbyshire, providing bespoke plans and advice to help them make sustainable and positive choices. If you want to know how your business can help nature's recovery, contact us at Wildsolutions@derbyshirewt.co.uk. We offer a wide range of solutions which we can scale to meet varying levels of ambition and resources, ranging from consultation visits by a professional ecologist, right through to design and delivery of biodiversity strategies. It has never been more important for us to take action for nature and make a positive change.
Hollie Fisher, Nature Recovery Advice Manager
Dr. Jordan Holmes, Nature Recovery Advisor