CISL adds BSI to develop certification of eco-credentials for business

A year-long pilot programme for eco-friendly start-ups looking to test and develop their emerging products is set to begin in Cambridge.

The ‘Trust in Sustainability’ project is a partnership between CIS – the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership – and the British Standards Institute.

Applications close on June 5 and the programme starts in July with a mixt of virtual and in-person sessions. Participants are expected to attend sessions at CISL’s Entopia Building three days a month. Business growth, mentorship and networking are top of the agenda.

In December 2020 BSI launched its Sustainability Innovation Lab in the Entopia building by Parker’s Piece. The business standards and improvement company has three people in its Cambridge premises. Its new lab is dedicated to accelerating the adoption of disruptive digital solutions that bring trust to sustainability, and enable more sustainable decision making.

The lab is part of a growing network at CISL which includes the Canopy accelerator, a community for innovators and small businesses pioneering sustainability innovation.

“The Canopy team of 10 people could support 30-40 start-ups depending on size,” says Sam Laakkonen, senior director sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship at CISL, adding: “Mainly the start-ups are two, three or four people, who use the coworking space until they get traction and funding, and then get their own premises.”

Sam took on the role in January. He had been working in his native Finland “building a sustainability institute”, and was lead mentor for the TechStars accelerator in the US. For the last three years he also “worked for the European Innovation Council’s selection council to distribute its $11.2bn fund in innovation start-ups”. He is now very focussed on his Cambridge tenure.

“We’ve had 11 programmes in the last two years,” he says of the Canopy programme. “That’s about 250 teams going through so far, and we plan to scale up for a bigger number, so we’re running six or seven programmes this year.”

Having BSI in Cambridge is a huge step forward. It means certification for sustainability can be developed, which will require the hot air from companies bragging about their green credentials can be backed up (or not). The Trust in Sustainability programme is keen to encourage start-ups which measure and monitor sustainability impacts, ensure viability and transparency, verify sustainability-related claims and enable more sustainable decision-making through, for example, analytics or modelling.

So how’s it going?

“The incubation programme with BSI was launched two weeks ago,” says Sam. “Their participation lines up with BSI’s strategic innovation objectives for trust in sustainability data.

“We’ve not chosen teams yet, but the teams that will work on certification side, so we’re asking how do we certify that an organisation is sustainable, how do we know how to trust that organisation?

“We’re still in the early stages of the sustainability and impact megatrend: the goal now is to determine if something is greenwashing or truly sustainable.

“It’s not about CISL providing certification, we’re looking for start-ups that focus on improving the process. What CISL wants to do is run pilots that incorporate the technologies to include this into their own organisation.

“When launching a programme like this you start a search, open the applications, then select the start-ups you would like to participate (seven for ‘Trust in Sustainability’).

“Then the programme with BSI takes six months, to help the start-ups and to help their engagement with the BSI team. So we help with co-creation.”

When the six-month accelerator ends, the products and services are then tested in the marketplace in the second six-month period.

I’m curious about how certification would look in terms of providing consumers with information, but it’s still very early days. Certification is hugely challenging to develop and even harder to implement, as anyone familiar with the story of food miles certification knows. Food miles were first mooted in the 1990s as a way of attempting to measure how far food has travelled before it reaches the consumer. The information is largely still unavailable to British shoppers.

“There’s lots of companies working to address the sustainability issue and develop methodologies [for certification],” says Sam.

“There are already lots of consulting companies, so it’s not totally new, but the idea for the BSI programme is to ask ‘what are technologies that allow us to develop trust?’ as there are so many ways to get around the tests – to practise greenwashing – that make you look sustainable when you aren’t.

“There are lots of ways of measuring sustainability and that’s what we’re looking for in terms of innovation. There are new methodologies on the measurements that determine whether an organisation is sustainable. It’s not black and white, there’s many shades of grey and this is what the BSI programme is trying to solve – how do we measure this, and how do people trust the sustainability claims? There’s no deadline as such, we just want to find the technologies to improve this process. They will improve going forward, so what we see next year will be very different in five or 10 years time – this is a leap forward though.”

Sam concludes that sustainability criteria isn’t just about the products or services, it’s also about the way everyone is treated across the whole supply chain.

“It’s not just environmental factors,” he says. “It’s also social factors, so that’s asking not just how do you treat employees and also how does your supplier treat their employees, but also how do their suppliers treat their employees? If two steps away they’re in China, that affects you.”

“We’re excited to collaborate with CISL on the Trust in Sustainability programme,” said Wendy Niu, sustainability innovation lab manager, BSI.

“The work we do with the Canopy team and the sustainability entrepreneurs will enhance our own innovation efforts, and together we can develop the solutions that deliver positive impact and accelerate progress towards a sustainable future.”

Details here of how to apply.