New reports celebrate 10 years of best-in-class environmental support for local businesses

4 March 2011

Environmental support service, ENWORKS, is marking its tenth anniversary this month with the publication of five short reports to describe how its work has impacted on local economic growth in the last decade.

Since its first contract was signed in 2001, ENWORKS has given funded support to more than 10,000 businesses, to help them improve their profitability by using resources such as energy, water, materials and waste more efficiently.

The new reports focus on the support delivered to businesses by advisers based at ENWORKS partner organisations in Cumbria, Cheshire, Lancashire, the Liverpool City Region and Greater Manchester.

They reveal how ENWORKS has helped businesses to improve their financial and environmental performance, by publishing locally specific information and results for the first time, alongside local business case studies and testimonials.

The reports describe how ENWORKS is helping businesses to manage environmental risks, invest in low-carbon growth and generate new jobs and sales.

Todd Holden, ENWORKS Director, explained: “We've spent the last ten years working closely with businesses across the North West and I believe the evidence of what can be achieved through resource efficiency speaks for itself.

“So far ENWORKS has helped businesses in the North West to create and safeguard more than 7,300 jobs and to retain and secure sales contracts of over £213 million. Our resource efficiency support is helping managers to find and make annual savings of over £120 million a year and that's on top of annual CO2e savings of 669,000 tonnes, plus savings in energy and fuel, water, materials and waste diverted from landfill.

“There's a great deal of potential for businesses to get ahead of the competition and take advantage of a range of benefits by making straightforward efficiency improvements, and the majority can be made with just a nominal cost or without any capital investment at all.”

ENWORKS has drawn on a range of funding sources in its first 10 years and is currently funded by the Northwest Regional Development Agency and the European Regional Development Fund until 2013.

On behalf of ENWORKS' funders, Mark Hughes, chief executive of the NWDA, said: “In the past ten years ENWORKS has become a highly respected and trusted organisation, demonstrating how straightforward resource efficiency improvements can have a significant impact on the profitability and competitive advantage of regional businesses.

“Thanks to a number of successful programmes of support and a thorough understanding of the agenda, ENWORKS has been recognised as a model of best practice and is influencing environmental business support policy at a national and European level.”

ENWORKS' achievements are already widely recognised at an international level. The service is a former winner of the global Ashden Award for Energy Efficiency and has just been nominated for this year's Sustainable Energy Europe Award in the sustainable consumption category.

Last month the team was invited to present in Brussels for the launch conference of the EU's regional policy on Sustainable Growth in Europe 2020. It will be presenting again at the European Forum on Eco-Innovation in Birmingham later this month.

ENWORKS is also due to present at the EU's largest annual environmental conference in Brussels during Green Week in May, on the importance of investing in resource efficiency, and on its experience of achieving green growth and job creation at the European Competitiveness Seminar in France the following month.

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