ESC 4 - Capital's sustainability journey
Media Isle of Man had the honour of being part of Energy Sustainability Centre's recent 'Roundtable' session, organised by MMC and hosted by Capital International Group.
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00:00Can you talk about, more in detail, some of the things that your sustainability journey for capital in general is?
00:08Well, Mark made a comment a moment ago about how impactful the sustainability journey has on the people in the business,
00:18and I echo that entirely. It's been a really galvanising force for our people,
00:26and our people is a big pillar in terms of our sustainable activity, both in terms of internally and what we're doing to support our people,
00:34but also how we take our people out into the community and how we engage with the community.
00:40I think there's a win-win on all ways round.
00:44We, like the majority of businesses on the Isle of Man, are a service industry. We don't make anything.
00:51We employ people and we deliver services.
00:54That was a really important learning step for us because we don't consume a lot of energy, actually.
01:01We do a lot of other things, and we generate a fair amount of carbon as a consequence of the other things that we do,
01:08but we're not a massive energy consumer.
01:11I think that some of the challenges that we face in solving the carbon emissions that are not energy-related or not directly electricity-related become really important to us.
01:23We didn't know that when we started the journey. We certainly know that now.
01:29I think that the whole process of understanding the context of sustainability, trying to set out a set of actions that become a strategy,
01:43trying to be clear about what that means internally and then to start to take that out to a more external audience,
01:50that's been a really exciting journey.
01:53I know to a person that's been involved in that, it's been nothing but enjoyable, frustrating at times, but enjoyable and hugely enlightening for everyone.
02:06The commitment to keep going and do more is there.
02:09The frustration comes out because you find yourself – it would be presumptuous to say to be ahead,
02:16but you find yourself trying to drag other parts of the community along.
02:22I'd like to see more, so for me to be more assertive in the target.
02:28I hate the fact that as a community we'll go to 2050 because that's where everybody else is.
02:35Just bring it forward five years and it creates a context that forces us as a community to do more.
02:43Let's do more rather than less.
02:46Everything has a financial cost to it and the costs are significant.
02:50But if you set out that vision much more clearly, it's amazing what you can achieve in a relatively short period of time.
02:56I just find that sort of, we'll wait, we're there, but we can't do it all today, very frustrating.
03:04In our business, we try to get ahead of that curve as far as we can.
03:08I'm amazed at what we've achieved in a relatively short period of time.
03:11I believe firmly that the community can do that as well,
03:15but it does need to be driven from the front and led in terms of where the positioning is.