Hairy Close Up

Anyone can cut their carbon emissions ten per cent in twelve months, right? Turn down the thermostat, switch off electrical equipment and lights in offices at night, drive more efficiently. Easy. But what about the businesses that made these changes long ago, how do you keep cutting carbon when the low hanging fruit has gone?

The key, as Kirton Farm Nurseries Ltd has found, is building your business around sustainability. This means going beyond efficiency savings to make products and services more sustainable, change operations and enact permanent and far-reaching reform in the company.

Directors Derek and Caroline Taylor, created the Hairy Pot Plants - eco-friendly coir fibre pots for their plants with wooden trays and pot labels to display them.  

Hairy pots in wooden trays

For 10:10 they focussed on reducing energy consumption in the nurseries. Additional efficiency savings cut 23 per cent of their electricity consumption in six months. For further reductions, Kirton Farm are thinking long term and investing in renewable energy. They have just been granted planning permission from Winchester City Council to build three 11kW wind turbines. Clean energy will supply 80-90% of the power needed by the nurseries and, due to the reductions they made this year, there will even be surplus to sell back to the grid through the Feed In Tariff. While the turbines won’t be ready for eight or nine months, Derek and Caroline are excited about the savings they’ll make in energy costs, and the revenue from selling the surplus will mean the turbines will pay for themselves in five to seven years.

Taking your company in a brave new direction may seem daunting. However, Kirton Farm's experience shows that even more radical changes can be good for business.