On 15 February, annual business awards were made by the Salisbury and District Chamber of Commerce.

A panel of judges from SW Agenda 21 made the Green Business Award which was sponsored by Salisbury District Council.   Read the judges’ comments and verdict:


Judges’ comments

This year we received applications from a wide range of different businesses, including businesses who had set up as ‘green’ in all their operations from the off, and those who sold ‘green’ products. We were very pleased to hear from these, and to learn about how they were running their businesses with environmental considerations at the forefront, or the innovative environment-friendly technologies they were marketing.

However, what the judges also found amongst candidates were businesses who were not necessarily ‘green’ in the nature of their operations, but who showed that they had changed the way they looked at their business, and had subsequently changed processes in order to lessen or mitigate the impact they were having on the environment, and in addition saved money into the bargain.

Whether the businesses were either fundamentally ‘green’ in character, or alternatively developing ‘green’ approaches, the judges needed to see evidence that candidates had acted on their conclusions, and put new measures in place.

The judges were surprised to find that the criteria of the award were best fulfilled not by green businesses, but by ones that would not necessarily have been expected to make such efforts to improve their environmental performance.

The three finalists are:

Emery Little Insurance Brokers
Country Coffee (last year’s winner) and
Autocrash Ltd

Emery Little Insurance Brokers showed a wide-ranging and innovative approach to environmental management. They have drawn up an Environmental Policy, instituted a staff car-sharing scheme, and used money saved on recycled toners to pay for a paper recycling scheme, to name some of their projects.

(Although they market a carbon offsetting scheme, it would have been helpful to know how this works in practice).

Country Coffee, suppliers of coffee and coffee machines, have managed to maintain the momentum they began last year, despite moving premises, and plan further energy and carbon saving improvements in the future with regard to their vehicle fleet.

Autocrash car body repairs, coming from an industry not traditionally associated with environmental concerns, nevertheless have tackled the issues ‘head on’, particularly with regard to the change ahead of regulation to water-based paint. They looked at waste, energy and travel and made improvements in all areas, taking care to carry staff with them through awareness raising, training and support.

And the winner is … Autocrash Ltd.