Published: 11 Sep 2024
Last week saw the latest in our series of popular Business Improvement Seminars for Members take place at the Barbican in London. Take Five with TSA: Sustainability, led by Helen Tandy, Director of Eco Communities, Carbon Literacy Trainer, Plastic Free & Net Zero advocate and Head of the Sustainable Cheshire project, explored some of the sustainability issues facing land surveyors today – and got Members thinking about what they could do personally and as businesses to reduce their carbon emissions.
“How bad are bananas?”
The interactive session included a game, How bad are bananas?, which encouraged teams to discuss various items – from clothing and food through to travel and pets – and rank them in order of their direct and indirect carbon emissions. The results of this exercise were surprising for all involved, and really made the participants question some of their own embedded assumptions.
Delegates also split into groups to discuss what they could do to improve their personal and business carbon footprint, with each delegate leaving the session with five takeaways to implement; a popular one being reducing attachments to emails.
The Barbican: home to a tropical rainforest and the venue for our seminar
As the venue for the workshop, the Barbican is one of the most unusual, unique and memorable spaces in London. It is home to a tropical rainforest, with over 2,000 tropical plants and hundreds of species of tropical fish, allowing visitors to learn about biodiversity, flora and fauna that are rare and endangered in their native habitats.
Awarded the ‘Most Sustainable Venue’ at the London Venue & Catering Awards in 2021, and the ‘Ethical, Responsible and Sustainable Tourism’ award at the London Tourism Awards the following year, the Barbican is dedicated to creating a better future by reducing its impact on the environment.
Following the session, Helen Tandy said, “Every business has different requirements and is at a different stage of its sustainability journey. The topic of sustainability is huge, and it would be impossible to cover it in one session. However, hopefully what we have done today is provide some useful information to signpost people and help them think about their carbon usage – and opportunities for reduction – a bit more. We don’t have to be perfect, just better than we were yesterday.”
“A fascinating day”
Katie Holt, business development manager at TSA added: “It was a fascinating day, and we all committed to some short- and long-term changes that we will endeavour to implement in our personal and professional lives.
“We’ve had excellent feedback from members who attended, and we are looking forward to running more seminars over the next few months in line with our stated mission to help members ‘build a better business. In the meantime, spurred on by what we learned at the Barbican, I will be looking into TSA’s carbon footprint to see how we can reduce it further’.”
Last year, The Survey Association commissioned The Retail Institute at Leeds Beckett University’s business school to produce a series of useful guides to running a business for all its members. This seminar series is based on some of the topics covered. Log into the members area of the website to download all the guides here https://www.tsa-uk.org.uk/members/
Look out for dates and topics of future workshops here https://www.tsa-uk.org.uk/events/.
