Innovator of the Year Awards: Sustainability and Social Purpose
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2023
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode showcases the finalists in the Sustainability and Social Purpose category. These businesses all want to make the world a better place – whether that’s through helping reduce our emissions or giving back to the local community. They believe that business isn’t just for profit, but for a purpose.
Martin Vander Weyer, The Spectator's business editor, judges the awards and hosts this podcast along with three other judges: Eva-Maria Dimitriadis, CEO of The Conduit Connect, which connects businesses with an eye to social and environmental impact with investors and mentors; Clive Bawden, chief operations officer of Warwick Music Group, a company that makes affordable instruments made from plastic and a former winner of the Innovator of the Year Awards; and Michelle White, co-head of Investec's private office.
The finalists in this category are:
- Coracle, which provides digital education to prisoners.
- Beam, which supports homeless and other disadvantaged people to get jobs, homes and skills.
- Agricarbon, which provides affordable and accurate soil carbon audits in aid of regenerative farming.
- Aqua Metrology Systems Ltd, which provides water monitoring to local municipalities, to ensure their water is safe.
- Sunamp, which uses patented 'heat batteries' to store heat produced by heat pumps, instead of water tanks.
- Celtic Renewables, which produces sustainable chemicals from unwanted wastes and residues.
- CeraPhi, which uses the earth's heat, accessible from end-of-life oil and gas wells, to produce clean energy.
- NatureSpace Partnership Ltd, which helps housing developers and local authorities check for newts, a protected species, in proposed sites for building.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to this podcast in our series of five podcasts for this year's Spectator Economic Innovator of the Year awards for 2023. |
| 0:17.0 | Every year for the past six years, we have travelled the country, north and south, east and west, |
| 0:24.1 | in search of the best, most interesting, the boldest new ventures that are innovating and disrupting in their sectors. |
| 0:34.2 | Many of those are in the field of looking for more sustainable solutions to a particular |
| 0:42.4 | business activity many have a social purpose they have ambitions to make the world a better place |
| 0:50.6 | which go beyond simply making a profitable business as an end in itself. |
| 0:56.4 | But we've selected today a group that particularly fall under the headings of sustainability |
| 1:02.5 | and purpose. I'm Martin Vanderware. I'm the business editor of the Spectator. I'm one of the |
| 1:09.9 | founders of these awards and I'm joined business editor of the spectator. I'm one of the founders of these awards. |
| 1:12.1 | And I'm joined by three fellow judges. |
| 1:15.1 | I'm going to start by inviting Michelle White, |
| 1:19.4 | representing the sponsor of the awards, InvestTech, |
| 1:22.7 | to introduce herself and InvestTech. |
| 1:25.1 | Thanks, Martin. |
| 1:26.1 | Yes, InvestTech are the proud partners on the awards |
| 1:29.2 | for the second year running. And as a firm founded by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, |
| 1:35.5 | we've been long-term supporters of business owners internationally and here in the UK. |
| 1:42.6 | I'm representing Investect Wealth and Investments UK, which we've recently |
| 1:46.8 | merged with the Rathbones Group, meaning that we're now represented in 23 towns and cities |
| 1:53.3 | up and down the UK. So it's been an absolute pleasure touring the country with you, Martin, |
| 1:58.2 | meeting the finalists and looking forward to talking about |
| 2:01.0 | the sustainability and purpose focused businesses today. Thank you, Michelle. So our first |
... |
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