ENWORKS named green NGO of the year
ENWORKS, the leading provider of environmental business support to companies across the Northwest of England, won gold at the BusinessGreen Leaders Award 2011 in London – The organisation was named NGO of the Year.
Judges were won over by ENWORKS hands on support for Northwest businesses that has helped to achieve nearly £3m savings within the year (with almost £1m requiring zero capital investment), plus over 10,000t of CO2e savings.
In the last twelve months ENWORKS identified more than 5,600 projects for improving resource efficiency in Northwest businesses with the potential of delivering annual cost savings of over £34m.
These environmental improvements have also helped businesses to safeguard or create over 60 jobs in the last 12 months and to retain/secure sales contracts worth £1.3m.
In addition, ENWORKS has successfully completed one £9m resource efficiency project and started another that runs until 2013. Independent evaluation of ENWORKS last project showed it was the most cost-effective project of its kind when benchmarked against the UK’s other regional programmes and the aggregated results for national environmental support programmes. The evaluation also found that, for an investment of £9m over three years, the project delivered over £175m net additional GVA to the economy.
Samantha Nicholson, Director of ENWORKS comments:
“We are very proud that ENWORKS has been named NGO of the Year by BusinessGreen. We work very closely with businesses across the Northwest to help the UK meet its emissions reduction targets and are proud that the work we do has been recognised. We are pioneering the way in helping businesses make the transition to a low-carbon economy whilst reducing pressure on scarce resources and stretched waste services. “
Clive Memmott, Chair of ENWORKS and Chief Executive of Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce comments:
“This auspicious award will act as an inspiration to ENWORKS. We believe in inspiring businesses to embrace sustainability principles and are honoured that our dedication has been recognised by the judges.”
Since 2001 ENWORKS has identified more than 24,000 resource efficiency projects in business, with an annual cost saving value of over £144m; of which over £31m has been achieved (over 4,000 projects). These annual savings have since accrued to generate cost savings of over £86m, achieved through environmental savings of 410,000t of CO2e, 4.4m m3 of water, 16.8m tonnes of materials and by diverting 214,000 tonnes of waste from landfill. Overall their support has helped to safeguard/create over 7,000 jobs and to retain/secure sales of over £210m.
The scope of ENWORKS work is deliberately broad. Their projects address energy, material and water efficiency, tailoring support to whatever is most pertinent to each business. Their support covers everything from compliance with environmental legislation to sustainable procurement, process efficiency, eco-design and even climate change adaptation. Their model delivers practical, hands-on assistance over the long term, rather than one-off interventions.
As well as on-site support ENWORKS host around 40 training and networking events each year and produce fortnightly ‘Green Intelligence’ e-bulletins of tailored environmental news and case studies. Through ongoing skills and knowledge transfer they turn business awareness into concrete change that can be sustained.
