10 minute read
The disruptive influencer
distillation of Georgia Elliott-Smith’s message is simple enough: it is time we all got real. For this environmental consultant, keen to popularise the idea of ‘disruptive sustainability’, it’s time to ditch the greenwash, ‘micro-consumerist bollocks’, the ‘that’ll do’ tick-box sustainability initiatives and their base minimum level of legal or standards-based environmental compliance. It is, she exhorts, time, to raise our game and to lean into the more considered, fundamental sustainability mindset that will be required from all of us in the years ahead.
This transformation in attitudes to corporate sustainability “is about going back to first principles,” she explains. “‘Disruptive sustainability’ is about a joined-up, honest approach to sustainability.”
There’s much to unpack here, but first some background. If her name sounds familiar, it’s possibly because in recent years Elliott-Smith has hit the headlines, having taken the government to the High Court over its Paris agreement carbon emission commitments. Delegates to Workplace Futures this year will also have seen her passionate speech there.
Originally from Cheshire, ElliottSmith started out as an undergraduate environmental engineer with Bovis. She set up the London-based waste management and environmental consultancy, Element Four, in 2003, since which she has developed a portfolio of project work for construction and real estate clients including names such as Landsec, Deloitte, Bank of England, Accenture and Microsoft.
Active travel
Like those of her clients, Elliott-Smith’s attitudes to sustainability steadily evolved – until 2018, when that ongoing evolution was replaced by a visceral reawakening. At the Workplace Futures conference in February, she explained what happened.
“I had a kind of rebirth as an activist. The IPCC report had come out with its 1.5 degree report telling us we had only 12 years before catastrophic tipping points were reached. I’d also been watching the David Attenborough documentaries and I realised that in my entire 20 years at that point it was just token things we were doing. A little bit here, a little
Environmental consultant Georgia Elliott-Smith has taken the government to the High Court, become an Insulate Britain activist – and is now exhorting workplace and facilities managers to take a more fundamental approach to the environmental impact of their operations. Martin Read reports
PHOTOGRAPHY: PETER SEARLE
THE DISRUPTIVE INFLUENCER
bit there. I’d been enabling corporates to say they were doing enough, but they weren’t”.
And so, Elliott-Smith joined Extinction Rebellion, took her place on Insulate Britain marches and became an ‘out and out’ activist.
“Activism should not be a dirty word,“ she reasons. “Everybody in the construction industry should be part of Insulate Britain; it’s an absolute travesty that we have allowed our building stock to become so poor.”
She is incensed at how the media has painted Insulate Britain as ‘extremists’, thereby “discrediting the people and thereby the message. Because when you think about what Insulate Britain is asking for, it is just, right and fair”.
Everybody should become a legal activist for climate change, she says, not least because the UK is no longer subject
to any of the case law from Europe.
“As climate litigation moves forwards, with all these cases starting to present legal precedents, the UK is now an island. So we need lots of British legal activists taking government to court to set these precedents.
Elliott-Smith’s own carbon emissions High Court case concerned how waste
A WIDER PERSPECTIVE
CHANGING THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS
Perhaps it’s no surprised to find that Ellio -Smith is excited by the sciencebased approach to sustainability performance. She is a Chartered environmentalist and a member of the Institute of Environmental Management & Assessment (IEMA), while she volunteers – alongside developers, engineers, architects, planners, academics, contractors and FMs – with the London Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI), a network of built environment professionals.
“LETI realised that the Building Regulations were not fit for purpose, that we’re facing a climate emergency, and that we have to be the grown-ups in this room and come up with our own guidelines about how the hell to achieve net zero, because we’re not ge ing the right guidance from government.”
Ellio -Smith has a disdain for traditional hierarchies, talking of how LETI is working alongside the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority on its London Plan – an example of new and o en more direct ways of ge ing things done.
“It’s not just linear anymore,” she says. “It’s new technologies, a new societal model, a new way of thinking about how society works, instead of going up in layers until you get to the decision-makers; because now there are li le cells of activity going on with experts in different areas, and they’re, in turn, linking out to different decision-makers.”
Ellio -Smith is an ambassador for Fitwel and a WELL Standard Accredited Professional, with her consultancy’s projects frequently built to meet these standards. (You can case studies of Element Four’s work on the Here + Now project in Reading and at Duo 280 Bishopsgate by scanning the link opposite.) Yet she is again keen to highlight how it’s all a question of starting point. “I don’t think these certifications are necessarily silver bullets. Some people will go through BREAMM and pick all the low-hanging fruit, the cheap options, so the building ends up with a mishmash of features that don’t genuinely benefit anybody. Instead they should look strategically at the opportunities in that building and use these certifications to max out the best positive interventions.”
Again, it’s that need to consider a wider perspective. And it’s why Ellio Smith also believes that gender balance within organisations is a key element of true sustainability solutions. “We still have a huge problem with gender balance – are FM firms doing enough here? Is this a strategic priority too?” incinerators were excluded from the UK’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) calculations, and what she saw as the resultant excessively high emissions cap to help industry, thus helping the UK dodge the ‘substantial and immediate emission reductions’ component of the Paris agreement. The Court, in accepting that the Paris agreement was a relevant consideration, considered the government’s interpretation of key articles as “tenable”, dismissing the challenge. But Elliott-Smith had made her mark. And she’s pleased that other cases are now citing hers as precedent. ”Even though we didn’t win the case,” she says, “it’s important to have brought the action because these micro decisions within the macro judgment are the bricks in the wall.”
Time for FM to step up
For facilities management, what’s required in Elliott-Smith’s judgement is a strategic approach. At Workplace Futures she took aim at workplace recycling points (“I hate to break it to you, but this doesn’t matter; this is not strategic”) and suggested starting from much further back. You may be chipping away at metrics such as waste diverted from landfill, or carbon used in construction – but in your specific case, do they actually matter? Instead, start by considering both ‘what is meaningful to this business’, and ‘what is meaningful on a global scale’. Of course consider what happens to a product at its end of life - but did you really need it in the first place? What of your supply chain and their ESG practices? Are they addressing poverty through their employment practices? Are you supporting sustainable consumption?
One way to introduce this mindset, she suggests, is if organisations match their activities against each of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) – with perhaps a particular emphasis on SDG 12, ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’ – and then work outwards from there.
Reporting the difference
While this recasting of approach is a key message, Elliott-Smith thinks fresh legislation for 2022 will force the sciencebased approach she is so keen to promote.
to propagate greenwash, so that if an organisation makes unsubstantiated environmental claims about its product or service, it can be prosecuted. (That could clean up my inbox – Ed.)
“We’re moving into an area where [an organisation’s] approach to making money is intrinsically linked to its approach to sustainability, and I welcome that so much. I just wish it moved faster. The green claims code, the TCFD, they’re great – but we need more of it.”
Of hybrid working and the re-evaluation of CRE space requirements, she says: “I welcome the churn, because it gives us an opportunity to refresh the requirements and do those retrofits that previously you couldn’t justify.”
Strength in numbers
At Workplace Futures she spoke of the Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor (CRREM) and its use to demonstrate whether buildings are on track against the UK’s decarbonisation curve as outlined in the Paris agreement commitments, and so at what point retrofitting may be required. She further champions measuring building performance through target setting via the science based targets initiative (SBTI). “By using sciencebased metrics [to measure building performance], we start to get that broader perspective. Are we contributing more or less to the overall impact? Forget everybody else, what’s our impact?”
And when we meet it’s just days after the introduction into law of an obligation for companies with more than 500 employees and a turnover of more than £500 million to disclose climaterelated financial information using guidelines set out by the Task Force Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Organisations in this bracket are now duty-bound to report any potential risks and opportunities associated with climate change, including the impact that changing climate is having on their assets. In other words, investors now get to see whether or not specific built assets are becoming liabilities, and they get to understand what mitigation is required. How would a building respond to overheating? Flooding? What climate adaptation measures are needed to At time of going to print, Elliott-Smith was ensure its resilience? preparing for the local elections on 5 May,
“I cannot stress how important this when she is standing as a councillor for is,” beams Elliott-Smith. “There’s never the Green Party. She is married with two before been this link between a business’s young children, and I wonder about how financial viability and its environmental she finds time - and whether she is positive performance. I like that TCFD is making about what the future will bring. investors nervous. This is about hitting their “Well, it’s not a job to me, it’s my life ability to get finance; and if suddenly they purpose and I feel passionate about what can’t, they’ll change their ways quickly. I do – so absolutely, yes I’m positive. I do
“When does this building have to be go through periods of despair when you retrofitted in order to decarbonise in line see just how big the problem is. But we are with the Paris agreement? It’s a simple billions of people and if we all stop being calculation, but it takes us out of the frozen with this paralysis of not knowing day-to-day and has us what to do, if we start asking ‘how are acting together, we we performing in a can tackle all these global context’? problems.” Does decarbonisation Her departing on this building matter, rallying cry for facilities or should we focus our managers is best efforts on a different summed up as ‘get your asset that’s performing hands dirty’. worse?’” “We have to stop
“You don’t need waiting to be told investors to care about what to do, because the environment, they the people telling us just need to care about what to do don’t have the prospect of their the right answers and assets being devalued.” policy regulation moves
And there’s more. at a glacial pace. We Elliott-Smith thinks the need to say, ‘what does competition Markets meaningful change look Authority (CMA)’s like? Not only for our green claims code is a company, but for our positive too. The code industry – and how can makes it an offence we contribute?’”
FURTHER READING Scan for related content SBTI (Science based targets initiative CRREM (Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor (tool) TCFD (Task Force on ClimateRelated Financial Disclosures) Knowledge Hub RESET Standard Carbon Brief (the science and policy of climate change) LETI (London Energy Transformation Initiative) Green Claims Code - Element Four Case Study: Duo 280 Bishopsgate Element Four Case Study: Here + Now, Reading Presentation Workplace Futures
