SupplyESChange Ethos and Ethical Efforts

A company's Ethos goes beyond its core operations, and extends to its values, culture, and actions to take care about impacts on the broader world, now.

Some ways in which SupplyESChange embodies (at a smaller scale), the Principles we guide businesses to consider include:  

Signing up to the Better Business Act coalition, by which SupplyESChange agrees to:

Check out https://betterbusinessact.org/

Cleaner Travel efforts for lower carbon footprint, less air pollution and safer roads:

We literally “Walk our Talk” as much as we can:

SupplyESChange’s commitment to environmental protection extends to travel efforts.

We work to minimise the need for trips that involve flying (to lower our carbon footprint, as flights have on average double the dirty carbon greenhouse gas emissions), by opting to support clients and deliver Impact via remote efforts wherever possible. This often means finding, engaging, empowering and supporting local experts on the ground, as we have done for clients with projects and suppliers in India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Tanzania, China, and more.

Domestically, wherever possible, we strive to travel by public transport, walk or cycle. Our Founder does not keep a car and is a regular user of trains from London-Cornwall return, within the UK and, endeavours to make trips to mainland Europe by train whenever possible.  We book business trips mostly as train journeys using Trainhugger.com, which works to restore the British countryside. 

To get around London, our Director will often cycle (she’s a fan of the sustainability efforts of Forest EV bike rentals when needing to get somewhere faster than pure pedal power).

We also use Transport for London’s fantastically speedy underground tubes, buses and train public transport, and wonderful new cross-rail, and walk whenever possible.

We rarely take taxis and when we do, prefer real taxis, or Bolt rather than Uber due to concerns with the model of billionaire enrichment at the expense of drivers. If we need a taxi/ride, we select cleaner electric vehicles whenever we can rather than dirty greenhousegas (GHG) / carbon-emitting diesel or petrol cars (yes, we know about the batteries, they are recyclable, and per an EU Directive increasingly recycled, and increasingly made with even less and less of the minerals which need ecologically sensitive, ethical mining. For example, Tesla have been changing to lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) cathodes, which are cobalt- and nickel-free).

In our work with businesses and trainings on reducing Scope 3 Carbon Emissions in global Supply Chains, we help build awareness in businesses of the ability to engage and partner with suppliers who are growing their use of emerging new cleaner, low-impact tech innovation to reduce dirty emissions such as DHL’s electric cargo planes, and EAV Solutions low-impact transport for cities (safe and stylish cycling cargo delivery).

Local Community. “Think Global, Act Local”:

SupplyESChange Founder Kate A Larsen is a member of the Clean Cornwall partnership of businesses committed to learning from each other and working together towards keeping Cornwall cleaner from plastic, water and other pollution, for a Sustainable Cornwall.

Greening the Town

SupplyESChange Director is also a voluntary (unpaid) local Green Party Town Councillor in Newquay, Cornwall (after many years living in London, Hong Kong, and Beijing). As a Councillor since 2022 she has:

  • input for Biodiversity and Nature protection in numerous reviews of applications to the Planning Committee, encouraged developers and architects to increase their use of better insulation, solar power, batteries, EV plugs, and more, and

  • driven the Council's effort towards procuring it’s own first Solar power installation to power a commercially tenanted property, as an active Environment and Facilities Committee member;

  • written the questions to engage and screen suppliers towards no modern slavery in solar panels procurement, and

  • written and first stage passed a new Biodiversity and Nature Protection Policy for the town council, and is working on the implementation plan, included detailed research for kerbside and parks management;

  • strongly pushed for continuance and expansion of the council’s efforts in recycling in parks, so as to prevent plastic and other waste entering the beautiful beaches of Newquay, Cornwall, nor needing to be burned;

  • supported the improvement of signage for the South West Coast Path Hiking route to support low/no impact travel in Cornwall;

  • proposed and is working on a “greening the train station” plan to make this low-impact public transport more pleasant and attractive and help reduce traffic on the roads;

  • engaged, volunteered for a few times, and promoted support for DISC, the local charity helping people losing their homes in the housing crisis, and needing food support in the cost of living crisis, and more.

Responsible Purchasing:

Kate takes care to purchase responsibly, refusing to shop at marketplaces such as Amazon, Temu, and Boohoo which have a track record of poor human rights due diligence efforts to ensure welfare standards for workers and suppliers. 

Instead, Kate chooses ethical suppliers and small businesses whenever possible such as the Ethical Superstore, and her local, independent refill store The Good Lyfe. 

Kate also offers substantial discounts for SupplyESChange services to local, ethical, and deeply responsible organisations, feeding more back into the community by doing so.

Global Community:

Kate is a voluntary Trustee (Board Director) of the UK based Charity The Rights Practice (TRP), which supports grassroots human rights advocates in China and Asia.

In the work that she oversees through SupplyESChange, Kate advocates for real living wages, paid through a formal payroll system wherever possible.  She also creates opportunities for young people.  The next step on this journey is looking at attaining B Corp status for SupplyESChange.  She uses Ecosia for web searches so that her research contributes to reforestation, and shops at Back Market for refurbished tech, reducing the impact of consumer electronics on our world.