During yesterday’s Digbeth Social Enterprise Network meeting we had the opportunity to meet a number of new social enterprises that are beginning to lay their roots in Digbeth including Well Rooted Wholefoods based in the Birmingham Friends of the Earth Centre.
We were joined by Charlotte Watkivs from Zero Waste Life. Zero Waste Life was launched as a blog in 2017 by Charlotte and Anna to as part of a new years resolution to reduce the waste they produced. Their blog naturally developed into a social enterprise and continued to grow and now offers a variety of free resources for individuals, businesses and communities to help us reduce our environmental impact as well as offering paid for consultancy services such as environmental audits and training workshops.
We went through a variety of ways in which our social enterprise can reduce our environmental impact following discussions to find out each organisations issues, including providing guidance around recycling, how to perform environmental audits and how to reduce paper usage. We then discussed more imaginative responses such as recycling pens through the Rymans recycling scheme, to using the Terra Cycling scheme for more difficult to recycle items. We finished with discussions as to how the network can support organisations to reduce their impact through fostering collaboration and providing a collective voice to pressure for improved environmental services.
If you are interested in attending our next Digbeth Social Enterprise Quarter Network Meeting on October 8th please email paul.barnes@i-se.co.uk. If you are interested in working with Zero Waste Life please email hello@zerowastelife.co.uk
Paul Barnes
Digbeth Social Enterprise Quarter Network Co-ordinator