Success through sustainability

That “extra mile” philosophy is also embodied by Peter Moody, founder of Gateshead-based GAP Group North East, a circular economy pioneer on its way to being the biggest electrical waste processor in the UK – and the most environmentally friendly. GAP’s main clients are local authorities and commercial businesses, from white goods manufacturers disposing of hundreds of dishwashers to corner shops offloading a single ice cream machine. “The fact that electrical waste used to be put in a hole in the ground for landfill is horrendous,” says Moody.

Today, the company recycles 700,000 fridges and 18,000 tonnes of small domestic appliances annually. It is currently building a second in Perthshire, powered entirely by green energy, with the capacity to process 600,000 units a year: “It’s going to be the cleanest and most environmentally friendly fridge plant in the world.” As well as putting all that raw material back into circulation, GAP has a wing that focuses on repairing, refurbishing and reselling old appliances. “We have an obligation to help people,” Moody says.

For Craig Smith, group managing director of ICT Reverse and Mazuma Mobile, the answer to sustainability is in our hands: “When I was at Orange, corporate clients would ask if they could give me boxes of old mobile handsets; we couldn’t take them at the time and this started to have an impact on new business, so I looked for a solution.”

This led to Smith branching out into mobile phone recycling with his company Second Hand Phones (now called ICT Reverse). “Reuse is always the best and first solution, but if we do get a laptop or mobile phone that is beyond repair, we’ll break it down and reuse its individual components,” he explains.

Making changes from the ground up

Firms across every sector can alter their business practices, cutting environmental impact and leaving the world a better place. 

Many of The LDC Top 50 prove that you can work to improve your business’s sustainability, even when that is not the key focus of its products or services. That’s the philosophy at wellness brand Ancient + Brave, where for founder Kate Prince, the “solid conviction of balancing people, planet and profit” means rigorous attention to detail. “It was essential for us to really bed in our ESG credentials from the beginning,” she says.

Ancient + Brave secured B Corp status in 2021 with an impressive score of 107 – and it is recertifying this year, when Prince is hoping to make that a whopping 125.

“We always paid more for our packaging, making sure it was FSE-grade, recycled and recyclable,” says Prince.

Also making great strides is Beyondly, an environmental compliance scheme and consultancy that counts Britvic, Itsu and Aldi among its clients. “I wanted to build a culture where work doesn’t feel like work – it feels more like a passion,” says Jess Aldersley, who became managing director in 2023 and has almost doubled the company’s profits this year. “We’re a business that wants to do good.” Beyondly is a proud B Corp with a pledge to reach net zero by 2030. It donates 5 per cent of annual profits to charitable causes, has signed up to the One Million Trees pledge, and empowers businesses to go beyond compliance through their extensive consultancy offering.

Chris Monroe is at the helm of Smiley Monroe, a Northern Ireland-based manufacturer that calls itself a “giant of belts” – as in conveyor belts. The company’s core mission is to revolutionise that niche. But it does so with an eye firmly on the environment. Its factories are powered entirely by renewable energy, company cars are fully electric and the firm is exploring whether it can make belts from non-crude-oil-based materials.