Working with business

Groundwork has been working closely with businesses since the early 1980s when Groundwork St Helens and Knowsley established an ongoing link with local glass manufacturers Pilkingtons. Over the next decade private sector links expanded, primarily by attracting business sponsorship for education and community programmes. One of these programmes, ‘Brightsite’, sponsored initially by Shell UK and later The Post Office, provided support to local businesses to improve the physical environment of industrial premises.

The introduction of the Environmental Protection Act and the first Environmental Management Standard BS7750 in the early 1990s provided Groundwork with a new avenue of opportunity to engage local businesses in action to improve environmental performance and contribute to the regeneration of local communities. New local and national initiatives were launched to help companies benefit from the cost savings to be achieved by examining their resource and energy use and waste streams. In 1990, for example, BP began supporting Groundwork's Environmental Review Service.

Groundwork now employs around 160 dedicated professionals delivering a range of projects and services aimed directly at the business sector under the banner of Groundwork ebs.

Through these projects and services Groundwork aims to help businesses and other organisations stay competitive and successful by improving their environmental performance. This is achieved by offering practical advice, environmental reviews, waste and energy audits and by helping businesses work together to reduce their costs. Groundwork is also supporting the development of a number of ‘green business parks’ where companies can improve their business practices, their business premises and the local environment at the same time.

This work has two clear aims:

• To demonstrate that businesses can become more profitable by adopting a more responsible attitude towards the environment and the local community
• To support businesses' competitiveness as an integral part of improving the social and economic prospects of deprived urban and rural neighbourhoods.