Sustainable Business Covered podcast: Reflecting on six years of sustainable business

It’s the end of an era. Episode 118 of edie’s flagship Sustainable Business Covered podcast will be the last of season one, which is coming to a close after six years so the edie team can prepare for a refresh and relaunch later this year.

This podcast series first started in early 2016, with edie’s Luke Nicholls, Matt Mace and George Ogleby delivering a special episode live from the ground at edie Live.

George has moved on to a communications role within the UK Government, while Luke and Matt are still at the edie team, working as content director and content editor respectively. For this special episode, Luke and Matt are joined by edie’s senior reporter Sarah George to reflect on what has changed – and what has, somehow, stayed the same – in the UK’s sustainability space since 2016.

To help reflect and recap, the team play one of the original interviews from the very first episode, with WSP’s David Symonds. David, now WSP’s Future Ready innovation lead, speaks from a time in which news agendas were dominated by Brexit and deregulation in the UK and Donald Trump in the US, and in which the UK Government had yet to disband the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and create the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). Sarah then calls David for a recap on some of his reflections on his original points in the context of 2022.

After a short break, the team play two interviews from the listeners’ favorite episodes from the past 12 months, for more reflection. The interviews selected are with:

• The Greater Manchester Local Enterprise partnership’s board member Steve Connor (taken from episode 107: COP26 Focus Week Special) 
• Nick Brown, then head of sustainability at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and Ian Peart, commercial director at Pernod Ricard UK (taken from episode 106: Spotlight on net-zero buildings, bars and beverages)

The edie podcast is available to listen to on Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple and Google. You can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and bookmark this page to see the full list of podcast episodes as they appear. 

Have a question about this podcast or a suggestion for future episodes? Email us at podcast@fav-house.com. Please be aware that we typically book speakers weeks or even months in advance.

Join the conversation during edie’s Green Finance Focus Week

As this episode comes to a close, the team encourages listeners to mark edie’s upcoming Green Finance Focus Week (18-22 July) in their diaries.

Throughout the week, the edie editorial team will be publishing a range of features, interviews, reports and more to inform and inspire readers around making sense of the ESG landscape and scaling up finance to accelerate the transition to a sustainable future. We will also be hosting a series of online Inspiration Sessions on the afternoon of Thursday 21 July, sponsored by Inspired Energy and featuring expert speakers from organisations including Natwest, Standard Chartered and the We Mean Business Coalition. Click here for details and to register.