The Environment - Sustainable Vision

"Small businesses spawned the concept of social responsibility long before the Government thought it up"

says Dr David Bellamy

IN A SPEECH in which he referred to small businesses as the rootstock of social responsibility, leading ecologist Dr David Bellamy OBE said that FSB members were role models for the local community.

Comparing small businesses to eco-systems that seek survival through sustainability, he said: ‘The most important thing you do is provide a local presence... you work on the block, where people can see you. You are a local powerhouse of the work ethic — we’ve got to get that work ethic back into the whole of the population.

’ He continued: ‘You are the role models. Small businesses are key players in the community. When they set their mind on solving an issue, whether local or global, they get on with the job.

‘Small businesses are the foundations of the future. Small businesses spawned the concept of social responsibility long before the Government thought it up.’

Bellamy said that he was run as a small business by his wife, and admitted that due to his international travel, his carbon footprint was incredibly large.

Reminding delegates that humans only ‘Controversially, he argued arrived on the earth relatively recently, he questioned whether Earth had enough resources for all its 6.62 billion inhabitants to make a living.

The botanist went on to offer inspiration to delegates in the form of case studies of small businesses that have adopted green practices. This included kitchen and door manufacturers using recycled wood to avoid deforestation, a company that turns waste polystyrene into a sustainable wood-like material to build houses, and ideas for how to make solar and water power for energy.

He was keen to point out the importance of maintaining trees to the long-term future of the planet and controversially argued that global warming was not the most important that global warming was not the most important thing for environmentalists. In answer to a question from the floor, he claimed that even if we burnt all the world’s fuel reserves, the earth’s temperature would only rise by one degree.

He concluded that, although the media was dominated by doom and gloom stories about climate change, there was plenty to be positive about. Real progress was being made by businesses worldwide to create a more sustainable future, he said.