Going green is within every firm's reach

Against the backdrop of the CBI’s Achieving net zero conference, innovative businesses came together for the CBI’s first Be More Green workshop to launch the Be More Green toolkit and discuss highlights and challenges of innovating for sustainability.

Discover the four key takeaways from the discussion in the room. 

1. Innovation doesn’t always mean new

We need to create products that last, and then inspire consumers to choose these products. Design Council’s Chief Executive, Minnie Moll underlined that 80% of the environmental impact of a product is determined at the design stage. Innovation is often driven by ‘newer’ and ‘faster’ but the need for sustainability means our focus must shift to making products that last. In the room the argument was made that to do this, we need to adopt a nineteenth-century mindset to twenty-first-century problems. Businesses and consumers will need to rethink the notion of value; something might cost more but last significantly longer.