Capital One is driven by a mission to Change Banking for Good. Our products give our business a purpose, but we recognise that we have a role and responsibility to go further. This sentiment drives our approach to Corporate Responsibility (CR).

We have spent over 20 years building valuable partnerships with charities and community groups, offering programmes that help remove barriers and change lives for good. For us, it is about more than simply giving back. Our CR programme focuses on leveraging our own resources, skills and culture, and on supporting our places, people and planet to prosper and succeed.

Cleanology is a family business built on sustainability and fair pay. A dedicated promoter of the Living Wage, it campaigns to increase take-up among clients, and has been first to market with a number of innovative sustainability initiatives.

Cleanology monitors all aspects of its business for improvement, and looks for pioneering new ways to reduce its impact. In 2019, it was the first to introduce recycled uniforms, and its all-electric fleet is cutting 13.5 tonnes of carbon equivalent every year.

Cleanology fully supports the Living Wage. As well as encouraging clients to switch, it campaigns year-round for fair pay.

Our Social Purpose, shaping culture for good, is at the heart of our business strategy, More Than TV. We have four key areas of focus: Better Health, Diversity & Inclusion, Environment and Giving Back, each with ambitious targets and industry-leading initiatives. While driven by a dedicated team, targets and initiatives are owned by the company as a whole, ensuring every employee is responsible for and invested in the Social Purpose of ITV.

A founding UK B Corp with a clear purpose – to use the power of communications to protect and improve lives. 100% focused on turning sustainability ambitions into action, across every aspect of our business, with our clients and across our community.

We work with businesses, charities, foundations and investors to tackle complex challenges and drive change, our impact is growing in partnership with our clients.

In January 2020 we launched a game-changing Climate Positive Plan – a first for our industry and continuing to stand out for its value chain commitments.

Over the last two years, we have set out to formulate and implement an industry-leading sustainability policy. One of our founding values is that how we develop is as important as what we create. By committing to a culture which challenges norms and exceeds stakeholder expectations, we create places which support and enable new and existing communities to thrive together. Our long-term objective is clear: for our work to bring long-term, tangible benefits for the environment, existing communities and future residents.

In October 2020 HS1 launched our ground-breaking Sustainability Strategy, going much further than any other UK railway to ensure sustainability in multiple areas including becoming the first railway to be run entirely on renewable electricity. The strategy places a significant focus on social sustainability. We recognise the importance of contributing our time and expertise to enable those communities in and around our stations and lineside to flourish. In 2020, HS1 was also awarded the prestigious We invest in People gold accreditation by Investors in People for our commitment to improving business standards and people management.

Ian Snow stands for people and planet. We sell homewares and gifts which often one-off pieces, made from sustainable raw materials or created from post-consumer waste. Bursting with character, they emphasize the people behind the products, and support traditional craftmanship and old age skills like hand weaving, mahendi painting and hand block printing. Established over 40 years ago from market stall beginnings and a walk to India, this business has grown whilst continuing to support human rights, environmental causes and speaking out on issues that matter. Ian Snow has been a champion in helping some of the most vulnerable people on earth affected by the covid crisis.

In all that Switch Packaging is and does, it is sustainable – from its services, approach and the team’s personal passions. The love for working for Switch comes from helping other businesses be more sustainable, but also contributing to a business that puts the environment first. In a challenging year and where sustainability was put in question, Switch upped their game. Sustainability is more important than ever, and they used the past 12 months to further streamline their processes, efficiencies and business model. They imposed a series of initiatives and activities to supporting themselves, clients and partners in being sustainable.

Beyond delivering sustainable IT solutions on a global scale, Techbuyer is committed to improving lives and the environment around us. On an ongoing basis, we launch and lead initiatives to activate the circular economy, advocate for a sustainable future and give where we can make a difference. The delivery of these impactful projects are a result of the ideas, time, and dedication of countless members of staff, and we have only been able to drive the change we have done to date due to their vision, perseverance, and innovation.

Kokroma is a baby and maternity clothing brand established in 2019 in Nepal. Rewati saw an opportunity to modernise traditional Nepali clothing and create fair pay jobs for women seamstresses and prisoners who weave the cotton. Inspired by the Finnish maternity package and the impact it had on reducing infant mortality and aware of the impact of cheap imported clothing from overseas, she created a unique and successful Nepali eco-friendly and sustainable brand focused on product quality. Rewati’s primary goal has been to provide employment and an improved quality of life for marginalised women and prisoners in Nepal.

As President and CEO of the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), Rachel Hodgdon is leading a movement centered on human health, well-being and equity for all. Rachel uses her position to powerfully advocate for underserved and underrepresented communities. She sits on numerous boards and advisory councils and has overseen many purpose-driven projects to help improve health and advance equity. Under Rachel’s leadership, IWBI has achieved some remarkable milestones – including the rapid launch of the WELL Health-Safety Rating: a third-party verified rating that helps organizations get back to business after the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2018, David Macdonald had an environmental epiphany – he optimised his personal life to minimise his footprint, but his work life was spent encouraging clients to invest in funds full of unethical companies. Realising this mismatch of values, he set up The Path, the UK’s first ethical financial advisory firm to focus solely on helping its clients invest in the most impactful environmental, social and ethical portfolios. Since being founded, it has helped 187 clients and is currently advising on £46m of assets, that will now achieve a positive impact rather than the conventional approach of supporting damaging industries.

An ardent believer that supporting indigenous people protect their rainforest is the best way to halt global warming, Cool Earth’s Director, Matthew Owen, has over 14 years instilled environmental respect throughout its team and programmes. He has overseen its programme partnerships expand from a single community-led one in Brazil to thirteen worldwide, including Papua New Guinea, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Mozambique and Peru. Protecting 300,000 hectares of tropical rainforest, encompassing 100 million trees and storing 50 million tonnes of carbon, Cool Earth is at the forefront of safeguarding indigenous people’s rights and helping mitigate climate breakdown.

Frustrated with wastage and the mis-application of cleaning chemicals, Dominic introduced chemical-free, portion-controlled, biotechnological cleaning sachets, saving 28,000 plastic bottles from landfill annually.

In 2020, he pioneered staff uniforms made from recycled plastic bottles, saving a further 7,000 bottles a year, and has just launched a 100% electric van fleet which will save 5,000 litres of diesel per year – equivalent to 13.5 tonnes of CO2.

A tireless campaigner for the Real Living Wage and fair treatment for employees, Dominic’s vision for modern business sits at the heart of Cleanology’s ethos, driving improvement across the cleaning industry and beyond.

The Studentsofibadan was birthed from the Fame Illuminate Project.

It is the pain, story, struggle and pain of student in Ibadan. The Students are majorly those in Government schools and also, those from low income families. I wanted know what it was like to be a student in Ibadan, share their stories, no because of ‘attention’ basically, but for people to be aware of what an average Ibadan or Nigerian student in a Government school go through to get educated.

Anya, displaying unique passion, commitment and courage, singlehandedly undertook Project Jagriti, travelling to the remotest deserts of Rajasthan, India to interact with women from the marginalised communities, who specialised in embroidery and stitching. Anya interacted with them to spread digital literacy and bridge the gender gap in digital spaces, urgently felt during COVID.

Anya did not have the advantage of digital networking, so she made it her personal mission, going from village to village, impacting more than 200 women and giving smart phones to help take their businesses online.

She is determined to take this project further.

Faisal founded Hands Free, a non-profit student run project, with the goal of stemming the spread of COVID by 3D-printing and installing biodegradable solutions, allowing hands free interaction with surfaces ranging from doors to shopping carts. With the help of ambassadors and volunteers, they have produced and installed 3D-printed solutions throughout their communities across 10 countries and growing. Frustrated with the state of plastic waste, Faisal founded LOOP, the Middle East’s first 3D-printer filament manufacturer using recycled PET waste. He is using the 3D-printing skills gained from Hands Free to work toward a closed loop, sustainable economy in his community.

The project involved recording the experiences of people from the marginalized communities had with the pandemic through photography and writing. Through the course of capturing these experiences, Gauri realised that women had been the most impacted and decided to launch a female upliftment project involving providing basic healthcare, sanitary and sanitation facilities and that project has now has been expanded into an eco-friendly women run not for profit clothing line to be launched by December 2021. She is also working on providing legal & educational aid to women and young girls and help to empower their voices & strengthen their sense of belonging.

As siblings who work as a team, Mishal and Mir have relentlessly campaigned to protect the environment as well be active contributors to community and social causes since the past 7 years. They volunteer their time with UAE’s leading environmental and humanitarian organizations as well as spearhead their own campaigns. Their collective community service endeavours span hundreds of hours. As published authors and radio presenters, they use these media channels to spread awareness about causes close to their hearts. Mishal and Mir were conferred with the prestigious UK-based Diana Award 2020 for being dedicated changemakers.

Riva through her platform WeCareDXB spreads awareness of harmful effects of Electronic waste and facilitates its recycling. Riva’s E-Waste work is supported by 100’s of students through various campaigns held across the city and in schools in Dubai. Several corporates and Govt entities have supported her campaigns and together she has recycled over 30 tonnes of E-Waste from the city

A cause close to her heart is upliftment of girls from rural India and she adopted 700 rural girls educated them on importance of Menstrual hygiene and supported them with 1 year stock of Sanitary pads.

Sahana Mantha co-founded Foundation For Girls (FFG) a social impact organization to economically empower homeless single moms and support their children. FFG invests in women to be financially savvy, career confident, digitally capable, and socially connected. FFG’s 4-pillar programming in Financial Well-Being, Career Journey, Digitally Forward, and Circle of Care equips women with the resources, relationships, and recommendations on their journey to economic mobility. Through group and 1-on-1 coaching, FFG coaches build bridges and human connection for transformative impact and multi-generational change. Sahana leveraged technology to scale FFG to support homeless single moms and their children in 9 US states.

Sarah at just 16 years old is a fierce young leader at the forefront of the global youth-led climate movement. Through her relentless passion towards empowering youth and fighting for climate justice, Sarah has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to take climate action. In 2019, Sarah founded Climate NOW, an international youth-led organisation focused on educating and empowering young people to take action. Climate NOW has worked with 10,000+ youth and worked with 70+ K-12 schools globally. Outside of Climate NOW, Sarah chairs her town’s Climate Action Committee and mentors other young people on their activism journeys.

S.O.S from the Kids write and perform songs as a wake-up call for climate action and invite children world-wide to join them. The group started as a small troupe singing to politicians and quickly grew until they were joined by hundreds of children who sang outside parliament for ‘The Global Climate Strike’ in September 19. They were invited to audition on Britain’s Got Talent, reaching the semi-final. This prompted an invitation for them to ‘take-over’ the social media of the UN Secretary of State’s Youth Envoy and to partner with the UN initiative ‘National Children’s Day, 2021.

The Eco Emeralds are a group of environmentalists aged 9-11 from All Saints Catholic Primary school in Anfield, Liverpool, one of the most deprived parts of the UK. Started by nature lover Elliott and his schoolfriends, they are transforming their local community. Their mission to connect all children with nature has gained the support of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, national NGOs and business leaders. They have inspired over 750,000 hours of nature engagement, helped sign up 15,000 young nature guardians, partnered with children internationally and reached a global audience of 500million with their message ‘Your patch, your planet’.

We established a new video interpreting offer for clients in just three days, due to no face to face appointments going ahead, so vulnerable service users could still work with their advisers. To date we have delivered more than 30,000 video calls

We also reduced costs of telephone services to many charities that had an increased spend due to the pandemic. 20 charities had telephone interpreting usage more than double, and, in some cases, it went up more than 1000%.

Working with Doctors of the World and the British Red Cross to translate tailored guidance (and updates) at no cost.

Food Connect is a zero emissions redistribution service run by Hubbub and piloted in Milton Keynes. We are using a small fleet of e-cargo bikes and an e-van to share surplus food from local businesses with the community.

Community groups such as members of Hubbub’s Community Fridge Network rely on volunteers to collect surplus from retailers and other businesses, and we know that collection times and the volumes of food can be a real challenge. Food Connect was set up to support that ‘final mile’ in food redistribution.

In March 2020. India went into a sudden lock down which after just a few days of it being in place, saw hundreds of thousands of people that had had their means of making a living taken away from them, they were going hungry and no government support was coming through. We set up a fundraiser, and organised kitchens in Jaipur to use the money we had available to make and distribute food. The project took off, and quickly became a big operation. In total, after running for 79 days, over £40,000 was donated, which equated to 220000 food packets & 2000 week supply food sacks both of which were distributed across 5 make shift kitchens in Jaipur.

On March 24, 2020 Nepal went into lockdown. Kokroma, a start-up baby clothing company was faced with financial collapse. Founder Rewati Gurung immediately turned production to mask making and turned a disaster into a remarkable success. Rewati gave her seamstresses 2 weeks paid leave, and provided them with 20kg of rice, cooking oil, Dhal, to last for several weeks. She then designed patterns for 3-layer masks. Devising an innovative system for speeding up production she was able to cut, print, and assemble 1000 washable 100% cotton WHO guideline masks per day with her team members working from home.

Megaworld Foundation arises to the COVID-19 crisis by launching “Mega Malasakit”. The name was derived from “mega” of Megaworld and the English word “very large”, combined with “malasakit” which translates in Tagalog as “attentive and genuine care for others”.

Committed to provide the immediate needs of its fellowmen, over 1,000 meals were distributed to medical frontliners two days after the quarantine implementation, and over 1,200 families, elderly, and children were reached out to. The scholars also expressed their gratitude to the Foundation for not only sustaining their education but also in helping them in their transition towards online classes.

Scenesaver, the free to use, website, launched during lockdown, to do something positive to help the theatre world, to make theatre accessible to all, to support and incentivise creatives, and to provide theatregoers with their fix of theatre during the pandemic. A hub showing performances from small theatres worldwide, users pay a virtual ticket price that is given to the performers. A shoestring start up run by three women, one of whom is disabled, there are now  400+ performances and thousands of users across the world.

Great British Designer Face Coverings, a collaboration, between Bags of Ethics and British Fashion Council. Over £1mn raised for charities including the BFC Foundation Fashion Fund which could support over 71 designer businesses through grants Funds raised in addition for NHS Charities Together and The Wings of Hope Children’s Charity Which? Consumer Organisation accredited “Best Buy reusable face covering”

Sold at over 10 retailers including ASOS, Boots, John Lewis, Waitrose, Amazon, Zalando, Sainsbury’s, Harvey Nichols Press coverage in over 950 publications, across 22 countries including the BBC, Sky News, ITV, This Morning, GMTV, Vogue, Daily Mail, WWD, Financial Times.

Since 2004, The Opentree Foundation’s project Toybank—Development through Play has been promoting at-risk children’s mental and socio-emotional well-being and learning through its Play2Learn Program. The organisation partners with NGOs, shelter homes, community centers, government schools, etc to set up well-curated Toybank Play2Learn Centers. Here, Play2Learn Sessions are conducted with board games and play activities designed to bring resilience and learning to children. As Toybank’s in-person sessions came to a temporary halt due to COVID-19, the team pivoted into action and modified its program into the digital Toybank Play2Learn Kit and other initiatives to make them life-ready and face any adversity.

If there was ever any doubt about the importance of Aviva’s purpose, 2020 provided the answer. Being there for people when it really matters is why we exist, and the past year truly put that to the test. Our new corporate purpose launched late 2019 based on insight from customers, employees and wider stakeholders. Little did we know that just months later, being ‘with you today for a better tomorrow’ would take on a new resonance, as we acted, fast, to support our colleagues, customers and communities during the pandemic.

Barclays’ £100m COVID-19 Community Aid Package was developed to support vulnerable communities in the UK and around the world impacted by the social and economic crisis caused by the pandemic.

It is the single largest charitable commitment that Barclays has made in its 330-year history, demonstrating the role the bank is playing to support the long-term prosperity of our communities.

The support consists of two components: donations to charity partners around the world to support vulnerable people impacted by the crisis; and a commitment to match colleagues’ personal donations and active fundraising efforts for their chosen charities supporting COVID-19 relief.

GLG, the world’s insight network, mobilized its substantial resources to support organizations on the frontlines of COVID-19. We provided pro bono support to more than 135 organizations in over 40 countries, which collectively reach more than 100M people. GLG’s services helped nonprofit and government organizations protect temperature-sensitive vaccine supply chains, manufacture and distribute PPE, conduct contact tracing in countries with less-developed health systems, and more. GLG also helped the business community safely and smartly navigate the pandemic by hosting more than 3,000 virtual expert events on practically every topic. We did this without layoffs, salary reductions, or furloughs for employees.

As the UK entered in to a national lockdown, on average, food banks across the UK experienced a 201% increase in demand for support as families found themselves in precarious financial situations as a result of Covid-related unemployment and loss of income. In response to the Covid-related food poverty crisis, Investec committed to fully funding and stocking food banks in the local boroughs of Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets, as well as 15 other food banks across the country for 24 weeks.

In November 2019 NatWest Group approached the National Emergencies Trust to offer their support ahead of the next national emergency. However, no one could have predicted that the next emergency would happen so soon or be of the scale of the Coronavirus pandemic.

In the face of an unprecedented crisis, the National Emergencies Trust and NatWest Group built a landmark partnership, at breakneck speed, to raise £10million in 4 months for grassroots charities supporting people in urgent need, all over the UK.

The pandemic has hit older, vulnerable people the hardest. Santander UK, Alzheimer’s Society and Age UK teamed up to create a vital Covid-19 response campaign, consisting of:

– Raising awareness of social isolation externally and internally
– The Santander Foundation awarding a £3million donation
– Mobilising 3,500 employees to volunteer and help alleviate social isolation in an internal campaign, QuaranTea. The Santander Foundation donated £1,000 on behalf of every Santander employee who volunteered, up to £1million.

This multifaceted campaign aligned with Santander’s Covid-19 response plan and sustainability strategy, addressing the challenges of social isolation from all angles.

The Hygiene and Behaviour Change Coalition (HBCC) was created by Unilever and the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to mount a rapid response to limit the spread of COVID-19 among vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries. The HBCC is novel in its combination of government funding with in-kind support and management from a private sector partner and represents a £100m contribution to COVID-19 mitigation efforts. The HBCC is formed of 21 NGO and UN partners running 78 projects across 37 countries, with the aim of improving hygiene for 1 billion people living in vulnerable settings.

Aviva and the British Red Cross have been working in partnership since 2016 to help communities become safer and stronger. With the Covid-19 pandemic taking hold, Aviva secured £10m of new community investment, one of the biggest single corporate donations ever received by the charity, to enable the Red Cross to activate a range of impactful programmes in alignment with Aviva’s purpose and values. Outcomes and impacts have included an 850% increase in sign-ups to the Aviva-supported British Red Cross community reserve volunteer programme in just two months, with the partnership supporting over 6.6m people since 2016.

Unreasonable Impact is the world’s first international network of accelerators dedicated to scaling growth-stage entrepreneurs whose ventures have the potential to employ thousands worldwide while solving some of our most pressing societal and environmental challenges.

Co-founded in 2016 by Barclays and Unreasonable Group, the partnership supports and scales up ventures operating at the leading edges of technology for the benefit of society at large, by connecting entrepreneurs to a global community of world-class mentors and industry specialists, including experts from across Barclays.

Parcels not Pollution is a clean air delivery service that was launched by Hammersmith BID in September 2019. Its objective is to reduce traffic, ease congestion and improve air quality in Hammersmith town centre. The project uses electric cargobikes as a more sustainable way to deliver goods in the local area, enabling businesses to send deliveries to a single location, before being sorted and delivered. When businesses were closed due to COVID restrictions, the service expanded to assist the local community with food parcel deliveries and has since developed an office-to-home offering to support hybrid working.

OrchLab is an innovative project which uses accessible technology, bespoke workshops and a website, to facilitate music-making for disabled adults for whom traditional instruments are inaccessible. OrchLab has worked intensively with 87 disabled adults since it began in 2017, led by JTI’s long-term community partner, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and supported by its delivery partner Drake Music.

–           100% participants demonstrated positive impact on skills, quality of life and wellbeing

–           37 bespoke digital instruments created

–           11 training sessions for care home staff

–           11 care home teams trained on OrchLab.org

–           Arts sector employment opportunities created

Entrepreneurship is growing rapidly across Southeast Asia. In Vietnam, women are one-third more likely than men to start a business. Yet, while these women are often drawn to entrepreneurship, they also face challenges accessing the resources and support they need to develop, grow and sustain their businesses. DevelopHer: Empowering Women in Asia provides a mobile learning application and online mentoring support to empower women entrepreneurs across Vietnam to overcome business challenges and take their enterprises to the next level. This multi-pronged approach supports high-potential women entrepreneurs who can employ and mentor others and serve as leaders in their communities.

Refugees who qualified as nurses in their home countries are being supported into work in the NHS as part of a pilot programme being run by RefuAid, Liverpool John Moores University, and NHS Trusts across the country. Backed by chief nursing officer for England Ruth May, the North West Refugee Support Pilot scheme is a first-of-its-kind collaboration, which supports refugee nurses with the process of becoming registered nurses in the UK and gaining employment commensurate with their skills and experiences. After a successful initial pilot of 14, a second cohort of 20 nurses has now begun.

Through a multi-faceted partnership, UBS and UnLtd have worked together to find innovative solutions to employability issues across east London. With our combined experience and networks, we have engineered programmes that overcome disadvantage through funding, mentoring, business support, helping to inspire future social leaders. East End Connect nurtured talent and people to find solutions to social problems, with our Thrive Venture Accelerator acting as an important element to providing employment to those furthest from the labour market. Our programmes empowered people to improve their life chances and to achieve their ambitions through social entrepreneurship.

In 2020, Co-op invested £44.6m in supporting UK communities. Cash donations included £15m shared between 4500 Local Community Fund causes; £2.9m in free school meal vouchers for Co-op Academy students and £1.5m to N.E.T. to support coronavirus response.  Over £5m in In-kind donations were made, including £1.5m worth of stock and millions of pounds of advertising airtime to support Fareshare fundraising. Colleagues, members and customers raised over £3m for our partnership with Mind, SAMH & Inspire, and 900k for Fareshare. Co-op invested over 323k hours of paid colleague time in community activity, through our Member Pioneers network and colleague volunteering.

The Euromonitor CSR Programme is strongly focused on community impact and it is employee led. We stand by our commitment to spend 1% of our annual turnover to charitable causes. We have long-term partnerships with 10 Headline Charities and we run regional charity partner nominations twice a year to encourage our global staff to nominate regional charities and make a positive impact on their local communities. We offer our employees 2 volunteering days a year and we match their personal charitable donations as well as office fundraisers. This year, we launched a Social Action Challenge which will reward one of our employees with an immersive experience with one of our Headline Charity Partners.

We have two key drivers for UBS Community Affairs. The first is to address issues in our local communities. While Community Affairs is a global program, it is delivered through a local focus on addressing inequality and creating opportunity. The second driver is building our corporate culture. We connect our employees to our local communities through volunteering activities that promote development of a positive business culture. Through Community Affairs, supporting the community and our business go hand-in-hand.

A percentage of the company’s profits each year are donated to the Morris Charitable Trust, where members of the family and BDC team meet regularly to find causes close to our hearts that will most benefit from funding in the local area. These tend to be community based projects that support local residents and grassroots charities which have a wide impact in the London Borough of Islington.

At EQ Investors (EQ) we recognise our broader obligations to people who have been less fortunate than us and take an active interest in our community. In these challenging times, our charitable arm, The EQ Foundation has continued to be supportive of causes that we have previously identified and in some cases allocated additional funds to increased need resulting from the pandemic.All EQ staff are encouraged to donate up to 2 days per year of their time to volunteering and to encourage our clients to also get involved, we designed EQ Matched Giving to support their favourite causes. Clients might decide to take part in a local run or bike ride, and we match their contributions up to £1,000.

During the last financial year, Jago has given to a range of individuals and organisations. We provided a day-long video shoot to an organisation helping refugees and victims of FGM. We also donated money for printing and branded merchandise for this endeavour. Cash was also donated to a young entrepreneur, allowing him to purchase a motorbike to be used as a taxi in Nairobi. Our director has been involved with Guiding Lights Leeds, providing strategic advice and development as well as branding and design. As well as this, during the national Lockdown Jago offered a series of free online poetry workshops, and free online workshops focusing on mindset and how to create online content. We also have provided free spaces on our Independent Content Creators 2-day workshops, teaching people how to create video content with their mobile phones.

Info to follow…

This Life entered for the Award as we wanted to acknowledge and recognise our staff, volunteers, board members and committee members, who not only generously give their time and talent to make a difference for the communities we support, but also their generosity in supporting us financially. The donations vary considerably, but every little bit helps and we are proud that they feel motivated and want to stretch their support further. The award is for these people.

During COVID, 17 corporate employees participated in our Virtual Volunteering Program to directly and indirectly support our beneficiaries. As of 31 August, they have supported us with translating 847 Play2Learn Sheets into five regional languages to reach children in seven regions of India. They create and edit learning materials such as videos to help children engage effectively. Toybank Buddy Program and Virtual Play2Learn Sessions had volunteers engage children in Play and art, craft, music activities or interactions to build socio-emotional skills. The Payroll Giving Program funds the Toybank Play2Learn Program across different geographies in Maharashtra.

With a mission to inspire all kids to Learn the World, Earth Cubs entertains and inspires 3-7 year olds with fun and engaging environmental and sustainability-focused content.

Awe-inspiring multicultural content is delivered through a personalised app, awesome video content and easy-to-use learning resources.  Play, Watch, Learn.

Earth Cubs is free for everyone and targeted at 3-7 years olds and their parents and teachers.

Our ambition is to have global reach and real impact – by collaborating with amazing organisations like Eco-Schools, Fairtrade International and the Rainforest Trust, we are unifying and amplifying global citizenship education.

EleFun’s ultimate goal is that communities value and benefit from living alongside wildlife. Through engaging young children in their environment, we increase the understanding of the benefits of wildlife and protecting ecosytems for the sustainability of our futures.

EleFun takes a grassroots approach to conservation benefitting both communities and wildlife, ensuring a future where they can live side-by-side. Engaging children in their environment through fun, hands-on-activities inspires innovation and creativity, and develops scientific processes inspiring these conservationists and problem solvers of the future. Showing children their wildlife in their National Parks generates empathy, understanding and pride replacing fear and hatred.

As all walks of life are being challenged by the COVID-19 crisis, Megaworld Foundation assures its scholars of their studies. Committed to help students continue their education, Megaworld Foundation launched different projects to help them adapt to the new normal.

94.84% of the scholars responded when Megaworld Foundation reached out and personally called to check how they were doing. 91.67% of them also found the social media-based online learning sessions helpful as they adapt to the new normal. Lastly, in time for School Year 2020-2021, 100% of the scholars submitted their enrollment requirements utilizing Megaworld Foundation’s Scholars’ Portal.

Tatawwar, meaning ‘to develop’ in Arabic, is an exciting, interactive education programme designed by Potential.com, in partnership with HSBC.

It brings together students, schools, parents and the business community to help innovate for a shared future. It gives 15-18-year-olds across the MENA region the chance to practice important business skills, understand sustainable commitments, and connect with some extraordinary professionals along the way.

This programme marks the first step into a sustainable future for participants, with Tatawwar building the skills needed for further education and employment, while promoting understanding of the UN Sustainability Goals and their impact on communities.

Traditional education struggles to keep up with the pace of technological change. Samsung had a chance to support and prepare young people for a future driven by innovation.

Not a School brought the UK’s 18–25-year-olds together online to learn in a new way, not by teaching expected ‘tech skills’ but through unconventional experts sharing learned experience in free, live and pre-recorded sessions. Students collaborated to solve social issues from climate change to online bullying via innovative thinking and creativity.

Over 20,000 have enrolled to date. In 2020 there was 927 days’ worth of e-learning, in just four months.

The Big Ideas Programme, delivered to over 23,000 young people across Britain, begins with a Big Ideas Day where we engage 11-14-year-olds in interactive activities around sustainability and the environment, team work and problem solving.  After the Big Ideas Day teams continue to work on their own Big Idea in development sessions organised by school turning their idea into a business plan and project for submission to the Big Ideas Competition.  Business mentors support the development of ideas throughout the Programme culminating with a National Final Celebration event.

Verizon Innovative Learning (VIL) is a transformative program working in low-income US schools that addresses the “digital divide” between those with technology and connectivity and those without. Through 1:1 device and data distribution, hands-on instruction, and innovation labs, VIL showcases what can be achieved when students who would otherwise be left behind receive the technology and education needed to thrive and how schools can increase effectiveness and resilience through tech-infused learning. During COVID, VIL staff and students were able to transition more easily and leverage their tech skills to innovate and even solve community issues remotely.

Ultra Education C.I.C exists to inspire positive and lasting change in the lives of young people who would otherwise suffer from the disadvantage of their starting point. We are focussed on those from minority communities for whom the existing education system does not deliver. Our core values support equality, diversity, and the capacity for human capability to go beyond expectations. Our solution is powerful because young people start to understand the significance of money and to the possibilities and benefits an entrepreneurial life can bring. We engage young people in a guided, safe and responsible way.

GSK implemented an ambitious, inclusive and innovative health and wellbeing strategy that’s helping its 95,000 employees across 96 countries to improve their health and wellbeing.

Highlights include a world-first Partnership for Prevention programme, providing healthcare provision for every employee and their dependents – from vaccinations to cancer screenings and treatment – energy and resilience workshops to encourage behavioural change, and technology to offer a personalised health and wellbeing experience.

Finally, key to GSK’s success has been the commitment, conviction and passion of its health and wellbeing teams and champions globally to engage, inspire and mobilise employees to adopt life-changing habits.

Our employee engagement programme, ‘Sustainability at Home’, was developed to support our net-zero strategy. As we responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and moved from office working to 16,000 ‘home offices’, we incorporated sustainability at home messaging to help to reduce the impact of remote working. Over 2,400 colleagues have endorsed our change in focus, joining our speaker events, entering our competitions, and supporting our research. Our programme has helped to bring colleagues together in a virtual working world, creating engaged environmental communities supporting each other to take positive impactful action.

Our Sexual Harassment Prevention (SHP) initiative launched in 2019 when our Women in Leadership, Academic Advisory and HR teams joined forces to educate, protect, and empower students first, and then staff, on a highly sensitive topic that plagues the hospitality sector.  Representing a successful bottom-up, transversal project at EHL, SHP showcases outstanding impact in raising awareness across different departments, engaging with multiple stakeholders, and promoting empowerment and wellbeing internally and externally.  In partnership with the Non-Violence Project Foundation, founded by an EHL alumnus in 1993, 1,700+ EHL students, and staff have benefitted from bespoke SHP training to date.

Our success is testament to the enthusiasm, dedication and commitment of our people who have faced unprecedented challenges in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to these unique circumstances, we launched new innovative communications tools to support our wellbeing, sustainability and ‘Future Ways of Working’ campaigns. We worked with our people to identify and implement new business practices that support employee engagement, wellbeing, sustainability, inclusivity, and that support our people to meet their career goals both now and in the future.

This year, the judges on the Environmental Behaviour Change panel felt they could not award a Gold, Silver or Bronze position to any of the entrants to that category; a unanimous decision of all three judges.

Fundamentally, there appears to be a lack of understanding of what this category is about. What the judges were looking for is a clear understanding of what environmentally detrimental behaviour(s) the applicant was aiming to change through their intervention, and evidence of such change. In addition, the judges would need to see a clear rationale for which sector(s) of society is being targeted with the action, and why. Equally important is evidence and/or data confirming the scale and longevity of the change in behaviour and how their intervention contributed to this. Innovation was an important consideration too. However, where there is no justifiable innovation, the judges instead would be looking to other factors such as considerable up-scaling of the intervention, and/or taking it to new sectors of society beyond the expected.

The judges felt none of the entries fulfilled these criteria to the extent that would justify a score high enough to award prizes. Many of the projects entered had merit and could have potentially scored better had they been crafted to reflect environmental behaviour change at the core of the project, but would have been better served entering one of the other, more appropriate categories. The judges agreed that 3 entries were strongly suited enough to other categories and were moved accordingly to Employee Engagement & Wellbeing, Climate Action & Waste Minimalisation.

Our Sustainable Procurement programme is key to achieving our Net-Zero Science Based Target. With over 90% of our emissions from our Suppliers, it’s imperative we support and work with them to reduce our collective impact, through reporting and education/collaboration. We work closely with our strategic suppliers to share our expertise and experience, support them to set targets and disclose their emissions on an annual basis. We also collaborate with our suppliers on joint initiatives to reduce impact. We are proud that 45% of our suppliers report they have developed their carbon reduction strategy as a direct result of our engagement.

Events@No6 is the home of, and was purpose built by the Royal College of Pathologist. The building itself was designed by Bennetts Associates, the first and only architectural practice in the world to have approved science-based targets and can be carbon neutral via the United Nations Climate Neutral Now framework.

Day to day, and with the support of our in-house caterers, Vacherin, we also focus on reducing negative effects on the planet, ethical provenance and a positive impact on people, both internally and externally to the immediate business. We are guided by provenance, people and the planet.

Aviva’s new Net Zero goal of 2040, the most demanding of any major insurer in the world, sets a new precedent for the industry and outlines a road map of action not just in the company’s direct operations, but also their supply chain, underwriting and investments.

This builds on a range of impacts seen from the company’s sustainability ambition in 2020, including a 76% reduction in Aviva’s operational carbon emissions since 2010 (down 16% since 2018), £11.7 billion investment in green assets and launch of the UK’s largest combined solar carports and energy storage facilities at its Perth office.

We not only became Net Zero in our own operations in 2020 but we also reduced our carbon emissions by 32% against a 2019 baseline. In 2020 we offset unavoidable emissions from our direct operational footprint via sequestration of the equivalent quantity of carbon from the atmosphere which took our emissions in 2020 to Net-Zero. We will maintain this level of offsetting and reduce emissions from our operations a further 25% by 2025 so that we capture more carbon than we emit. We will also maintain our Zero Waste to Landfill accreditation (UK&I) and continue reducing resource use and waste.

Treedom is the website that allows people and companies to plant trees and see their impact online, supporting local farmers worldwide.

Every tree is geolocalized, photographed, has its online page and can be virtually gifted, make it engaging and fun. Treedom trees support CO2 absorption, biodiversity, soil restoration, reforestation and communities.

Treedom wants to provide rural communities with the opportunity to develop a sustainable agricultural model based on agroforestry, supporting the initial costs of planting trees.

Digitalizing trees has created a transparent tool for users and businesses to contribute to the environment, communicate their commitment, engage their networks.

Inspired to “Think Boldly and Tread Lightly” the Yealands Wine Group (Marlborough, NZ) launched with a vision to lead the world in sustainable wine production.

In pursuit of our carbon positive ambitions, Yealands has developed innovative sustainable initiatives across the breadth of its business.   Wind and solar power have been supplemented with the use of vine prunings as an energy source; collectively accounting for approximately 25% of our energy requirements.  Large scale composting of winery by-product, inter-row vineyard cropping, the development and planting of extensive wetlands are just a few examples of our sustainability in practice.

At EverGrain, we’re realising the untapped potential of barley. Backed by AB InBev, EverGrain sets out to save the proteins and fibres of 1.4 million tons of barley (with starch removed for the brewing process) and transform them into ingredients that improve the nutritional profile of foods and beverages – while having a lower environmental impact when compared to alternatives.

Through the power of circularity, we are transforming what used to be a low-value by-product into high-quality, nutritious ingredients. We believe there is no such thing as waste, only things that haven’t been transformed yet.

Our continually developing sustainable workplace services maximise the lifecycle of office assets, enabling clients to reuse as much as possible internally, gain economic value through resale, donate to charities and schools to deliver social value, and recycle and recover residual value at end of life.

In 2020 alone, we remanufactured over 15,000 items of furniture, keeping 300 tonnes in use, saving over 1,000 tonnes CO2(e).  We reconditioned 10,000 items of IT, saving over 1,500 tonnes of CO2(e).  We generated over £3m in used furniture and IT sales through our retail channels, and donated 3,826 items through our donation initiative.

Tork PaperCircle® is the world’s first used paper hand towel recycling service, helping businesses to be circular and closing the loop on paper hand towels, cutting the carbon footprint of paper hand towels by up to 40%. Tork, an Essity brand, pioneered Tork PaperCircle with a goal of recovering resources lost in the product cycle loop. Tork PaperCircle is a service that collects and processes used paper hand towels as a fiber source for other products. The service is aimed at enhancing customers’ sustainability credentials among both employees and visitors.

Genuine Solutions UK (GSUK) exists to save planet earth, one recycled product at a time.  The company finds new uses for mobile phone handsets and accessories by sorting them, cleaning them, testing them and releasing them in A1 condition for a new life.

Building a circular economy is the entire purpose of the business. GSUK recovers, reuses and recycles unwanted mobiles and accessories. To date, we have stopped more than 8,000 tonnes of electronic waste from ending up in landfill by repurposing and recycling more than 10,000 phones and more than 200,000 units of accessories every month since 2008.

ITRenew is combatting the staggering amount of e-waste and CO2 the IT industry creates with circular economics and first-of-its-kind, sustainably-sourced infrastructure. More than 70% of the carbon tied to IT comes from manufacturing. ITRenew is addressing the root cause, working with the world’s largest cloud service providers to create closed-loop supply chains and transform their decommissioned tech into new, integrated compute, storage and networking systems. Sesame by ITRenew solutions are shifting the industry toward more responsible and profitable growth, bringing the financial and sustainability advantages of circularity to all, and changing how IT hardware is designed, built, used and reused.

In Dec 2019, RTA through it’s higher management directions and supports adopted the Circular Economy principles and practices as one of the first entities in United Arab Emirates. Teamwork has been formed to capture all current practices and promote the implementation over all RTA departments. RTA follows RESOLVE Framework for Circular Economy from Ellen MacArthur foundation to evaluate its practices. RTA has 8 main projects, 240 current applications, 128 future initiatives support Circular Economy Concept.

Born of out lockdown Wiltshire Digital Drive exists to bridge the digital divide, refurbishing, redistributing and responsibly recycling unloved technology. Over 2,200 devices were saved from landfill in the first 4 months of 2021. 750 individuals who cannot afford access to technology have received a device to date and any machine that cannot be reused is sent to it’s recycling partner Blackmore Richotech who operate a ‘zero waste to landfill’ policy on all IT equipment: reusing, or recycling, 100 percent of the equipment it collects.

DPD is the UK’s no.1 parcel carrier with the UK’s largest electric vehicle fleet. We now deliver over 350 million parcels a year. Across the business, we now recycle 70% of all waste, with zero to landfill.

We are proud to link our waste strategy with social change. The Eco Fund is funded by our circular economy initiative to protect the environment. The plastic shrink wrap we use in our operation is broken down, and recycled to create new plastic shrink wrap. In 2020 we donated £200,000 across 140 organisations.

Most of Ian Snow products are created from materials which have been used before. One-off pieces that burst with character without having a major impact on the planet. We specialize in pieces from post-consumer waste, remanufactured into totally new pieces. We run a factory here in Devon and operate a fabric collection scheme where our customers send old clothes in exchange for vouchers. We use the clothes to make new clothes from, nothing is wasted. We also have a large vintage range which contains rare and unique pieces sourced from artisan partners across the world. Every aspect of the supply chain is considered and made use of, so nothing goes to waste.

SOS Kit Aid is a UK registered charity supported by World Rugby and run by rugby mad volunteers – no paid employees. In 20 years we have recycled/delivered over £6 million pounds worth of rugby kit to 44 disadvantaged rugby nations. Enough quality recycled rugby kit for over a quarter of a million disadvantaged youngsters to play rugby all around the world. Every year UK youngsters grow out of their kit and we estimate over £1 million pounds worth of kit is thrown away needlessly into scarce UK landfill sites. SOS collects from UK rugby clubs, schools and kit manufacturers. By recycling we have saved over 1500 tonnes of Co2 – because there is no need to manufacture new kit.The tried and tested SOS blueprint model could so easily be converted to other products/roles – rugby coaches/referees. other sports, other textiles, electrical equipment, cameras, phones, bikes etc. The IOC has placed the SOS blueprint on their website.

As part of its continual drive to reduce waste, Redrow launched its ‘Reduce the Rubble’ initiative in 2020. The project tracked all waste produced during construction of a standard four-bedroom detached ‘Oxford’ house type across three sites and looked at how this could be reduced in future during procurement, design and construction. Redrow is the first national housebuilder to undertake a waste project of this calibre at this scale and actions taken as a direct result of the initiative will help the housebuilder towards meeting its target of diverting all waste from landfill by 2022.

Artisanne is an award-winning sustainable homeware brand. Fair Trade certified, we work directly with over 85 weavers, having started with 3 – with no middlemen involved whatsoever.  This helps to ensure that the women earn a regular, fair and secure income for their creations. and gives them access to an international market that they would not otherwise be able to reach.

The Artisanne Alibaba Signature collection is a beautiful blend of traditional Senegalese weaving techniques, passed down from mother to daughter, and modern designs which combine to create household storage that’s timeless, highly distinctive and designed for longevity.

FabRap creates exclusively designed and contemporary reusable fabric gift wrapping. Inspired by Indian textiles and the traditional Japanese art of Furoshiki, these gift wraps combine timeless elegance, sustainability and ease of use.

FabRaps are ethically made from premium quality 100% certified organic cotton carefully curated to ensure it is soft yet durable. Zero waste and multi-purpose, these gift wraps can be handed from recipient to recipient for years to come to delight and enhance the act of giving while looking after our planet’s resources at the same time. They offer the very best alternative to throw-away single use wrapping paper.

At Polestar, being electric is not enough. We want to accelerate the shift to green mobility by using innovation and design-driven sustainability. Polestar 2 charts this course with an interior consisting of recycled plastics and wood, featuring WeaveTech a 100 % vegan, future-proof upholstery as its standard. The most innovative aspect on Polestar 2, though, is that it is the first car that uses a blockchain solution to trace the cobalt used in the battery to either the mine or the recycling plant.

Switch packaging offered their consultancy and technical packaging expertise to design a unique and completely renewable, biodegradable and compostable tray for a well-established kitchen company. This new tray design is made from recycled waste-based pulp and is used to protect the company’s kitchen doors during transit. This pulp tray not only removed a huge amount of polystyrene from the environment, but was also more efficient in its size, scale and manufacturing process than the previous design. This saved the client money in warehouse storage and reduced emissions emitted during transportation, improved their brand image and prevented damages to their products.

ECO360® carbon zero desk provides a plastic-free, fully recyclable solution for semi-permanent office setups where quick disposal at the end of a project or contract is required. It has been adopted by many forward-thinking, sustainability-led construction contractors throughout the UK and creates an aesthetically pleasing, inspiring workplace for staff and contractors. Constructed entirely from cardboard, it is the only commercial product of its type on the market, fully tested and designed for modern office use.

Mobility is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. Millions of people already use a mobility device and with ageing populations, solutions that are smart and efficient are urgently needed. But assistive technology hasn’t seen innovation in decades.

Toyota Mobility Foundation and Nesta Challenges launched the Mobility Unlimited Challenge to change that, inspiring creators across the globe to reinvent the wheelchair.

89up was communications partner for this three-year challenge, which saw 80 teams from 29 countries around the world enter with the winner announced in 2020. The campaign secured 725+ international media hits across three years.

In 2019, we stopped our biggest show, Britain’s Got Talent, to encourage families to talk instead, building resilience. Our 2020 lockdown campaign ‘Apart but Never Alone’ encouraged people to reach out to each other, and as a result 6.4 million people started a conversation with others. Our Help Our Helplines initiative appeared across our flagship shows raising over £1.4m for mental health helplines. These campaigns have meant more people than ever are likely to start conversations about mental health. They have become part of our culture and helped dismantle taboos around mental health.

At Tesco Mobile, we’re driven by our purpose: We care for human connection. This is integral to our business and at the core of how we behave and the decisions we make.

When Covid-19 hit, we put our purpose into action with Tesco Mobile Reconnects. By 2023, this initiative will give £2.4 million worth of phones, devices and connectivity to help at least 13,000 vulnerable and disadvantaged people reconnect with society.

Not Her Fault was launched on 25 November with a short film published on Facebook. It asked viewers to stop blaming female victims of harassment, violence and abuse. Women in Cambodia were invited to submit their stories and a description of the clothes they were wearing at the time. These stories were used to create an interactive, cyber exhibition set inside a Cambodian house. Visitors explore the house, find the clothes, and read or listen to the stories in Khmer or English. This exhibition is the first of its kind using voices of Cambodian women to tell their own stories.

Leather is the most environmentally destructive textile. Treekind™ by Biophilica is an entirely plant-based leather alternative for the fashion industry. It’s recyclable as green waste, home compostable, non-toxic, plastic-free, and estimated carbon negative. In compost or nature, its micronutrients actually nourish the soil.

The UN estimates that 68% of humans will live in cities by 2050. Cities could become more self-sufficient using an abundant, inedible, and global wastestream – 880m tons of green waste annually – to make materials and products. Our vision is a portfolio of green waste materials to support the transition to local, sustainable manufacturing and consumption.

The Haines Collection provides a solution to the environmental challenges facing the Interiors industry today.

We are a pioneering platform for the resale of unwanted designer textiles, wallpaper, lights and accessories that would otherwise be discarded and potentially end up in landfill. We are enabling interior businesses to make small but positive changes to help reduce the negative impact that they have on the planet.

OceanHero is a new way to engage people in the fight against ocean pollution. We are a search engine just like Google; however, we help recover one ocean-bound plastic bottle for every five searches.

We are working with our partners Plastic Bank, Waste Free Oceans to make this possible. Furthermore, we are building a micro recycling plant in Manado, Indonesia, to enable local communities to deal with their plastic waste directly instead of shipping it to larger cities or landfilling it. Our partner, Trash Waste Solutions, executes this initiative together with a local waste bank.

Small changes make a big difference, which is why Ed Sandison created a bamboo golf tee.  This alternative to traditional plastic golf tees has made a mighty impression on the golf world with leading organisations as well as players moving away from plastic tees.  Ed’s ambition, however, was not to sell golf tees, but to create conversations and collaborations that bring sustainability to the forefront of the industry. OCEANTEE is a platform that showcases pioneering sustainable businesses and enables its charity partners communicate with huge, international, audiences.  The range now includes 4 types of tees and a sustainable clothing line.

Scenesaver, the free to use, website, launched during lockdown, to do something positive to help the theatre world, to make theatre accessible to all, to support and incentivise creatives, and to provide theatregoers with their fix of theatre during the pandemic. A hub showing performances from small theatres worldwide, users pay a virtual ticket price that is given to the performers. A shoestring start up run by three women, one of whom is disabled, there are now 400+ performances and many thousands of users across the world.

Steel Warriors melt down knives taken off the streets and recycle the steel into free outdoor street gyms. The charity use street workout to transform the lives of young people affected by crime, violence and social exclusion, giving them the skills and confidence they need to create positive futures. Steel Warriors currently have four gyms in London, that act as free community hubs and they are looking to scale nationwide.

Aligned’s proprietary cooling technology, Delta Cube (Delta³), captures and removes heat at its source, resulting in a hyper-scalable and ultra-efficient environment that dynamically adapts to customers’ IT loads. The Delta³ design accommodates both new data centers and retrofit facilities, improving the efficiency of existing infrastructure and enabling customers to Expand on Demand. The cooling system is based on innovative technologies addressing three aspects of thermodynamics: heat absorption, heat transport and heat rejection.

Agilyx is an early leader in the advanced recycling of difficult-to-recycle post-use plastic streams. With Agilyx’s chemical recycling technology, mixed plastic waste can be converted to new virgin-equivalent plastics, as well as chemical products and fuels – creating the opportunity for true circularity. Agilyx is the first company in the world to develop a commercial-scale closed-loop chemical recycling process for polystyrene.

CarbonClick was created to make carbon offsetting simple and trustworthy for all, through software as a service.

A customer in a CarbonClick-enabled online checkout sees a ‘green button’. By pressing it, they add a small fee to their purchase, which buys a carbon offset to reverse their carbon footprint.

We make this service available for businesses all around the world, using our smart platform, plugins, and APIs.

Every contribution funds certified carbon offset projects that fight climate change; conserving indigenous forests and supporting renewable energy initiatives from all around the world.

The Fair Labor Association believes that factories and farms should be safe places to work, and that each worker has the right to earn a living wage. The FLA’s Wage Data Collection Toolkit and Fair Compensation Dashboard helps companies in the garment sector use technology to take action towards this goal.  These tools calculate what workers are earning, illustrate the gap between actual and living wages, and measure progress over time.  Businesses are using these innovative tools to improve worker wages and quality of life; and the FLA has seen aggregate wages increase amongst members using the tools.

i am me educates, enables and empowers young people to be proactive in supporting their own mental health through our free app and focuses more on a preventative approach to mental ill health.

After two year’s of research with young people, teachers, and mental health specialists, the app was created with the simple aim of providing a free, easily accessible way of connecting with and supporting young people to learn more about how they can best support themselves with the tools, capabilities and know-how to thrive in today’s world.

The app is a positive space on any young persons phone.

ITRenew is combatting the staggering amount of e-waste and CO2 the IT industry creates with circular economics and first-of-its-kind, sustainably-sourced infrastructure. More than 70% of the carbon tied to IT comes from manufacturing. ITRenew is addressing the root cause, working with the world’s largest cloud service providers to create closed-loop supply chains and transform their decommissioned tech into new, integrated compute, storage and networking systems. Sesame by ITRenew solutions are shifting the industry toward more responsible and profitable growth, bringing the financial and sustainability advantages of circularity to all, and changing how IT hardware is designed, built, used and reused.

OceanHero is a new way to engage people in the fight against ocean pollution. We are a search engine just like Google; however, we help recover one ocean-bound plastic bottle for every five searches.

We are working with our partners Plastic Bank, Waste Free Oceans to make this possible. Furthermore, we are building a micro recycling plant in Manado, Indonesia, to enable local communities to deal with their plastic waste directly instead of shipping it to larger cities or landfilling it. Our partner, Trash Waste Solutions, executes this initiative together with a local waste bank.

It takes courage to say something or to ask for help.

Stymie is a digital, confidential messaging service that empowers young people experiencing harm & bystanders with options to confidentially take action.

Stymie is focused on awareness, early intervention & prevention.

The Stymie webapp currently operates in schools, delivering encrypted, anonymous notifications from students to authorised recipients including uploaded evidence.

Issues raised include family violence, bullying, cyber-bullying, depression, illegal activity, harassment, self-harm, & harm to communities.

Notifications can be sent 24/7 and are triaged by schools, within their wellbeing & child protection policies.

Our purpose is to enhance psychological safety to empower communities everywhere with the self belief that you can speak up. With approximately 100 000 senior schools worldwide, our vision is to have Stymie in schools everywhere.

We launched to make a green dent on the universe, offering cheaper energy and better service than ever before. Unleashing tech to drive innovation hand-in-hand with social gain is delivering outstanding positive impact: helping 2.2m customers cut costs and emissions (£160m and 7,000,000+ tonnes of CO2 saved annually), supporting 100+ renewables generators to keep energy and profits local, creating 1000s of jobs and helping other providers become leaner and greener for their customers through expanding licensing partnerships (incl. EON/nPower and Australia’s Origin Energy) – putting us on course for  100m customers on our Kraken platform by 2027.

Our Sexual Harassment Prevention (SHP) initiative launched in 2019 when our Women in Leadership, Academic Advisory and HR teams joined forces to educate, protect, and empower students first, and then staff, on a highly sensitive topic that plagues the hospitality sector.  Representing a successful bottom-up, transversal project at EHL, SHP showcases outstanding impact in raising awareness across different departments, engaging with multiple stakeholders, and promoting empowerment and wellbeing internally and externally.  In partnership with the Non-Violence Project Foundation, founded by an EHL alumnus in 1993, 1,700+ EHL students, and staff have benefitted from bespoke SHP training to date.

The Fair Labor Association believes that factories and farms should be safe places to work, and that each worker has the right to earn a living wage. The FLA’s Wage Data Collection Toolkit and Fair Compensation Dashboard helps companies in the garment sector use technology to take action towards this goal.  These tools calculate what workers are earning, illustrate the gap between actual and living wages, and measure progress over time.  Businesses are using these innovative tools to improve worker wages and quality of life; and the FLA has seen aggregate wages increase amongst members using the tools.

We launched to make a green dent on the universe, offering cheaper energy and better service than ever before. Unleashing tech to drive innovation hand-in-hand with social gain is delivering outstanding positive impact: helping 2.2m customers cut costs and emissions (£160m and 7,000,000+ tonnes of CO2 saved annually), supporting 100+ renewables generators to keep energy and profits local, creating 1000s of jobs and helping other providers become leaner and greener for their customers through expanding licensing partnerships (incl. EON/nPower and Australia’s Origin Energy) – putting us on course for  100m customers on our Kraken platform by 2027.

Tatawwar, meaning ‘to develop’ in Arabic, is an exciting, interactive education programme designed by Potential.com, in partnership with HSBC.

It brings together students, schools, parents and the business community to help innovate for a shared future. It gives 15-18-year-olds across the MENA region the chance to practice important business skills, understand sustainable commitments, and connect with some extraordinary professionals along the way.

This programme marks the first step into a sustainable future for participants, with Tatawwar building the skills needed for further education and employment, while promoting understanding of the UN Sustainability Goals and their impact on communities.

Traditional education struggles to keep up with the pace of technological change. Samsung had a chance to support and prepare young people for a future driven by innovation.

Not a School brought the UK’s 18–25-year-olds together online to learn in a new way, not by teaching expected ‘tech skills’ but through unconventional experts sharing learned experience in free, live and pre-recorded sessions. Students collaborated to solve social issues from climate change to online bullying via innovative thinking and creativity.

Over 20,000 have enrolled to date. In 2020 there was 927 days’ worth of e-learning, in just four months.

Scenesaver, the free to use, website, launched during lockdown, to do something positive to help the theatre world, to make theatre accessible to all, to support and incentivise creatives, and to provide theatregoers with their fix of theatre during the pandemic. A hub showing performances from small theatres worldwide, users pay a virtual ticket price that is given to the performers. A shoestring start up run by three women, one of whom is disabled, there are now 400+ performances and thousands of users across the world.

Steel Warriors melt down knives taken off the streets and recycle the steel into free outdoor street gyms. The charity use street workout to transform the lives of young people affected by crime, violence and social exclusion, giving them the skills and confidence they need to create positive futures. Steel Warriors currently have four gyms in London, that act as free community hubs and they are looking to scale nationwide.

Through a multi-faceted partnership, UBS and UnLtd have worked together to find innovative solutions to employability issues across east London. With our combined experience and networks, we have engineered programmes that overcome disadvantage through funding, mentoring, business support, helping to inspire future social leaders. East End Connect nurtured talent and people to find solutions to social problems, with our Thrive Venture Accelerator acting as an important element to providing employment to those furthest from the labour market. Our programmes empowered people to improve their life chances and to achieve their ambitions through social entrepreneurship.