This article is based upon an event that I attended in London on Thursday 05/04/18. This was the second Cheeky Panda event that I have attended and this one was equally as inspiring as the first.

The event was hosted in Sustainable Bankside which is a coworking space for sustainable startups located in Southbank. The location is really impressive as is what they have done with the place. The evening began with a few words from James Byrne who is a co-founder and director at Sustainable Workspaces who run the space.

This was followed by a few words from Adam Woodhall who was the MC for the evening. He had one of the best lines of the evening when he described the venue as a “story factory.”

The first speaker of the event was Syed Ahmed the founder and director of Savortex ltd, a multi-award winning, British Green Tech and IoT (Internet of things) company. I was really impressed with the figure that UK businesses could save £23 billion per year by improving the way they use resources and interact with their business premises, specifically how they manage their washrooms. Savortex make the EcoCurve™ range of low energy IoT hand dryers that come with statistics that blow their competition away. The brushless motor technology makes these especially efficient machines. But the most impressive feature for me was the IoT technology which feeds data back to the cloud so that the cleaner only needs to turn up when the washroom is dirty. The screens were also a really cool feature that can be used to promote internal messaging as well as being sold as advertising space. Overall, Syed was clearly an accomplished public speaker and his products have impressive features and benefits.

The next speaker was Nigel Bamford the founder of Waterblade. Nigel is clearly a very charismatic character in the mould of great British inventors. Waterblade takes a trickle of water and transforms it, making it many times more useful for washing your hands. This enables reductions in both water and energy consumption. As the video below shows, this is a quite a simple solution, but it’s impact is transformational.

Waterblade

Waterblade was another company presenting that evening with impressive statistics. If a normal everyday tap would use 20L/min, a typical water saving tap would allow 6L/min, Waterblade only releases an impressive 2.4L/min. It is also easy to retrofit and the savings are very impressive. For a unit that costs £10, a user would save £26/pa. I thought it was really instructive that out of that saving £10 is for the water and £16 is for the energy you save having to heat less water. Overall, Nigel came across as a really nice guy and his product is impressive.

The next speaker was Robert from Symphony Environmental. They offer a really impressive range of solutions for plastic packaging. I found the designed to trace solution that they offer really interesting as I had no idea you could do something like that with plastic packaging. The oxo biodegradable packaging that they offer is also very impressive and comes with the benefit that it could go a long way to solving the litter problem if more packaging like this was used.

The last speaker of the night was Chris Forbes of The Cheeky Panda who was also the organiser of the event. They were debuting a number of new products including pocket tissues, kitchen tissues and napkins. These all come with the usual high standards of environmental performance that you would expect from The Cheeky Panda. For attendees, there was also the benefit of armfuls of freebies that you can see in the picture below. I certainly helped myself to a great deal of these before I left.

The Cheeky Panda were also displaying the video that you can see via the link below. This was the first time that I had seen the video and it is certainly very inspirational.

The future is what we choose it to be

Bamboo has incredible properties for use in tissue products and these extend well beyond its fast rate of growth. Bamboo is naturally hypoallergenic and its long fibres mean that it is naturally very soft.

Chris also demonstrated the flushable handtowels feature that the Cheeky Panda products come with. This is a really important benefit that saves lot of resources. Chris also talked about the 5,000 tonnes of CO2 that has been saved from clients switching from wood-based tissue products to The Cheeky Panda sustainable bamboo tissue products and this is certainly a great figure to have saved. Chris also talked about their partnership with the World Land Trust on projects that they run in Vietnam to carbon balance their organisation. All that can be said is that this is an organisation that operates to the highest standards on sustainability.

What you need to know

In concluding, then, it must be said that this was an event of very high quality. The breadth and depth of the speakers on offer was really impressive.

All four of the companies offer solutions that are easy to implement, offer great savings and are good for the planet. That is what sustainability is all about.

If you haven’t already attended a Cheeky Panda event, make sure you do the next time they host one.

Thank you for reading,

By Barnaby Nash

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below or reach out to me on social media. Did you attend the event, if so what was your highlight?

Let’s stay connected

I can be reached on LinkedIn and on Twitter @FollowBarnaby