THE Centre for Sustainable Practice and Living (CSPL) was launched just over a year ago on World Environment Day by Dr Aileen McLeod MSP, Scotland’s Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform.

The CSPL is a collaborative venture between the University of Stirling’s Management School and SEPA.

Its aim is to become one of the leading research and knowledge centres globally, driving transformational change across all aspects of sustainability.

The CSPL’s Director is SEPA’s Erik MacEachern, who worked closely with the Management School to establish the Centre. "The idea is to provide a range of practical actions and activities in support of SEPA’s enhanced statutory purpose," MacEachern comments.

Demand for the formation of the Centre came partly from the policy arena, and the sense that regulation had to move beyond policing compliance to encouraging innovation, and partly from businesses demanding new ways to collaborate.

"The thinking behind SEPA partnering with the University’s Management School is that it provides a powerful way of connecting to leading edge thinking on sustainability in the global academic and business communities.

"We’re looking to tackle a lot of the complexity that enterprises have to grapple with when they are looking to improve their operations as far as sustainability is concerned," he explains.

The Centre will support businesses by helping them to grapple with and analyse complex data sets, turning the resulting knowledge into structured, shared understanding and practical solutions, he notes.

"We want to access the best thinking across a range of issues, be they environmental, social or economic, from leading practitioners and academics around the world.

"At the same time, where we collectively develop new approaches here in Scotland, the Centre and our connectedness with the wider business, academic and research communities provides us with a channel to disseminate new thinking out there," he adds.

One focus of interest, for example, is in the various initiatives that are continuing around the world to green up supply chains. The Centre engages in active dialogue with businesses to explore how much flexibility they have to adapt their current business model to new innovations.

"Take the case of a niche steel manufacturer, part of their carbon footprint might be the extent to which they source virgin steel feedstock that has been derived from iron ore through earlier manufacturing steps.

"By commissioning scrap steel instead, using steel coming from North Sea decommissioning for instance, there are huge opportunities to transform their business model into becoming an integral part of the circular economy," he comments.

"Plastics manufacturers too, have considerable scope to use recycled product, moving them more deeply into the circular economy.

"We are very keen to explore with businesses of all sizes just what circular economy opportunities there might be for their operations," he adds.

One of the Centre’s main goals is to shift the perceptions of business leaders away from the idea that sustainability is just a reputational issue or a way of improving their brand. It does have a very positive brand impact, but the more important factor is that ever since the start of the industrial revolution, societies have been "externalizing" the real costs of production.

As social and regulatory pressures make externalizing costs more and more difficult, companies who are innovative about making their business models more sustainable are more likely to see enhanced profits, he points out.

"Our flagship executive Sustainability Leadership Development Programme, developed and delivered jointly with the University of Cambridge, equips senior business decision-makers to do exactly this."