Category Archives: Green Consultants

Student Case Study: Vigo Presses 

Name of Student:  Max Cousins

Degree Subject: BA Modern Languages

Type of Internship: Green Consultants Scheme

Company Name: Vigo Presses

Job Title: Green Consultant

Description Of Company: Our Apple Juices and Cider are made naturally, just using the apples from our traditionally managed ‘non sprayed’ Orchards at Whimple in Devon. Our Silly Cow and Prize Bull Ciders are naturally fermented using the wild yeasts on the skins of our Devon Cider apples. No sulphites or added yeasts or preservatives, just cider apples and love… Throughout October, the whole family, picked & pressed apples from our orchard, a ton at a time and discovered that the cider apples made delicious apple juice! We all play our part in the business & go out & about to sell our wares at farmers markets & food fares as well as selling via shops, pubs, restaurants, cafes & tea shops etc.

What were your key duties and responsibilities during your internship?

  • Analyse business data including invoices, expenses, energy consumption etc to gauge current sustainability of the business and to highlight areas of improvement.
  • Conduct employee surveys in order to establish their knowledge of current sustainable strategies and to establish which type of recommendations would be best received culturally by the staff.
  • Generate a list of actionable steps to take action in making those improvements
  • Provide possible marketing strategies in order to not only ‘brag’ about current sustainable initiatives in the company but also to encourage sustainable behaviours amongst their customers

What outputs and outcomes did you deliver for your employer?

I created a slide deck that audited and set out action steps to improve their sustainability in the following areas:

  • Energy Usage
  • Scope 1 & 2 Carbon Emissions
  • Procurement
  • Culture

Produced practical plan detailing how to run monthly ‘green meetings’ and how to use marketing channels to advertise these efforts.

Recommended that they separate their general waste and separate their recycling to make it easier to record waste data, waste reduction progress and to estimate their CO2 emissions from their waste management.

Provided list of possible and practicable next steps to help them achieve the status of B-Corp

What was your biggest achievement on your internship?

My biggest achievement was by establishing a full picture of how the organisation operates and how the attitudes towards sustainability differ throughout the organisation. I was able to do this by working in an open office with the whole team and car sharing with a number of staff members during my commute as well as more formal interviews with staff members and the leadership team.

What did not go so well on your internship? How did you overcome any challenges?

I had to go to hospital due to an asthma emergency and so internship was disrupted. I was able to complete my internship remotely while I recovered.

There was no waste data which made it hard to measure key aspects of sustainability. I was able to identify the key data points that would be required and then provide actional recommendations in order to collect this data.

Skills Learnt: 

  • Ability to Work Under Pressure
  • Organisation
  • Decision Making
  • Researching
  • Time and Work Load Management
  • Written and Verbal Communication

Attributes Developed:

  • Initiative
  • Perseverance
  • Professionalism
  • Confidence
  • Motivation

Your message to other students considering a similar job role, organisation or sector?

“Do It ! – through the green consultant internship you also will inevitable receive great insight into other functions of the business / organisation and you may develop interests in roles or sectors that you had never considered before.”

Student Case Study: Sutton Council

Name of Student:  Alice Dunsmore

Degree Subject: BA Geography with European Study

Type of Internship: Green Consultants Scheme

Company Name: Sutton Council

Job Title: Green Consultant

Description Of Company: London Borough of Sutton Council offers a range of statutory services to the local community.

What were your key duties and responsibilities during your internship?

I had two main duties during my internship. One of them was to go through an environmental report and write justifications for actions in a manner which the general public could comprehend. I also rang all schools in the borough and tried to get them to separate waste and food waste, this also caused me to set them up with a specific waste collection company.

What outputs and outcomes did you deliver for your employer?

Justifications for report and arranged food waste collections in all schools in the borough.

 What was your biggest achievement on your internship?

My biggest achievement on my internship was reducing food waste in over 70 schools and nurseries.

 What did not go so well on your internship? How did you overcome any challenges?

My internship was very positive. I felt a little lost as the internship was remote and not in person however, I had a really nice team who helped me feel very welcome.

Skills Learnt: 

  • Communication
  • Teamwork and Collaboration
  • Problem Solving
  • Negotiation
  • Persuasion

Attributes Developed:

  • Initiative
  • Perseverance
  • Commercial Awareness
  • Confidence
  • Motivation

Your message to other students considering a similar job role, organisation or sector?

“I would highly recommend working alongside the Council in the sustainability sector. The Council has real power to be able to make significant and positive environmental change, so working alongside them has possible significant outcomes for the reduction of climate change and saving the environment for the future.”

Employer Case Study: Procura Consulting 

Name of Organisation: Procura Consulting

Description of Organisation: Procura Consulting is a boutique management consultancy firm specialising in procurement and supply chain optimisation. Our consultants work closely with all kinds of organisations to improve their profitability by identifying, delivering and maintaining savings in procurement expenditure.

Founded in 2016 we have grown rapidly fuelled by a compelling service offer to clients and a commitment to the highest standards of professionalism and operational excellence. Our success has been recognised with recent nominations for the Management Consultancy Association’s “Best New Consultancy” and “Commercial Excellence” awards.

Name of Employer:  Luke Abbott

Job Title: Manager

Internship Scheme usedGreen Consultants 

Feedback:

“We recruited an intern from the Green Consultant scheme to help develop our Sustainable Procurement service. We are developing a new service that focuses on helping organisations become more sustainable by utilising their procurement function and supply chain.

Our intern researched sustainable solutions and suppliers in different areas of spend, for example, IT and completed completed a number of internal projects focusing on the sustainability of Procura as a business and formulated some great ideas for our sustainable procurement service.

She was a fantastic intern who really took initiative in tasks. Her passion for sustainability is clear. We asked the student to come back and work for us, we offered her a one-month internship in October this year to continue her great work which she accepted. I expect we will offer her another internship or possibly a graduate role once our Sustainable Procurement service is up and running.”

Employer Case Study:  Jurassic Fibre Ltd

Name of Organisation:  Jurassic Fibre Ltd

Description of Organisation: Jurassic was founded by CEO Michael Maltby, a resident of Sidmouth in East Devon. Michael has built fibre and similar networks around the world, including in Russia and the Caribbean, and his goal is to build the digital infrastructure you deserve to support your lifestyle in the 21st Century.

Jurassic Fibre is part of the Fern Trading Group, and has substantial funds available to deliver a top quality fibre broadband network for the South West. We are planning to invest over £250m into building a fibre network in Devon, Dorset and Somerset, passing over 300,000 homes, making gigabit speeds a reality.

With the valued support of our partners – who together form a world-class supply chain to deliver fibre to the region – we started to build in 2019, with continued growth always on the horizon.

Name of Employer:  Gillian Huppler

Job Title: SHEQ Manager

Internship Scheme usedGreen Consultants 

Feedback:

“We recruited an intern to work as a Green Consultant. They provided us with a report identifying JFL strengths, weaknesses, opportunities to improve and potential threats associated with current compliance. He gave us an overview of what competitors are doing and gave us recommendations. He used our auditing tool (iAuditor) and build useful audit formats which will enable us to monitor compliance and track our performance.

I was hoping to get the student involved in review our waste management but the manager involved had been given an important task and was not forthcoming with the information. Our intern handled this well and we discussed other objectives, he got on very well with the change of plan.

I would have been more than happy to offer our intern a role if there was one available and I will be discussing this with CEO to see if there is any future opportunities.

The student provided us with some extremely useful information which will add value to our business. He was professional, pleasant, enthusiastic and would be a great asset to any company. He worked well in the office and on site talking to the civils teams undertaking excavations. Our intern provided us with a useful presentation to enable our company to understand our opportunities for improvement and developed useful tools for monitoring progress, which is amazing as we only had him for 35 hours. If this is the quality of Students Exeter can provide, we will definitely be looking to repeat this in the future.”

Employer Case Study: Adaero Precision Components Ltd 

Name of Organisation:  Adaero Precision Components Ltd

Description of Organisation: We were founded in 1988 and, since January 2015, have been part of the Indutrade group. Adaero is a specialist manufacturer of high precision components, engineered to customer specifications. We aspire to be first choice for companies who require high quality finished parts ready for assembly at competitive prices. We invest in state of the art machine tools and continually improve what we do so that we supply machined parts of genuine excellence. Our skilled and experienced team continually innovate to meet customers’ changing needs.

Name of Employer:  David Smith

Job Title: Finance Manager

Internship Scheme usedGreen Consultants 

Feedback:

“We recruited an intern to work as a Green Consultant. The intern comprehensively reviewed our environmental impact and provided a report which recommended a range of actions. Our final action plan takes on most of the actions recommended by the intern, with a small few overridden by commercial factors. The vast majority of his recommendations will be put in place.

We got value from this internship and will explore further graduate roles, probably covering other priority aspects of our business. The internship provided very useful independent review of our own initiatives, giving us a fresh and well-informed pair of eyes to evaluate where we had left gaps. The intern was eloquent, influential and professional.”

Employer Case Study: The Royal Albert Memorial Museum

Name of Organisation:  The Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery

Description of Organisation: The Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery (RAMM) is one of Britain’s finest regional museums and a flagship service of Exeter City Council. Its displays showcase world-class collections and collectors that tell the story of Exeter and Devon from the prehistoric to the present.

Name of Employer:  Sophie Harbour

Job Title: Engagement Officer (Skills Development)

Internship Scheme used:  Green Consultants

Feedback:

“We recruited two interns to work as Green Consultants.

One of our interns spent a week researching RAMM’s waste management and following her this developed:

  • A sustainable agenda for waste management across the RAMM’s services, notably in relation to recycling of staff, shop, and café waste.
  • A focus on taking forward the Green Champion initiative and making suggestions for reducing single use plastic waste.
  • A more formal sustainable policy for the RAMM’s shop based on their verbal policy which is printable and can be shared with customers.

Our other intern researched potential methods of making RAMM’s museum building more energy efficient, more specifically by;

  • Using energy assessment tools to identify key problem areas in addition to those suggested by staff (insulation, open space and lighting)
  • Identifying key sustainability solutions to increase energy efficiency of the RAMM building by looking at new technology such as BEMS and best practice from similar buildings
  • Suggesting solutions should be effective at increasing energy efficiency, be financially affordable as well as practically feasible in terms of implementation for a grade II listed building.

This internship was a real success. We didn’t find there were any aspects that didn’t go well. Both interns did a fantastic job with their research and the outcomes will be used in the future. The outcomes of which we will use to inform future funding applications in order to implement some of this work.”

Employer Case Study: EFFECT Photonics Ltd (2)

Name of Organisation:  EFFECT Photonics Ltd

Description of Organisation: EFFECT Photonics have been shaping the future of photonics by interconnecting humanity through fast, affordable, sustainable, and effective communication technologies. The emergence of DWDM is one of the most innovative and important phenomena in the development of fibre optic communication technology. From both technical and economical perspectives, the ability to provide the world potentially unlimited data transmission capacity and bandwidth is a massive advantage of our DWDM technology.

Name of Employer:  Tim Durrant

Job Title: Engineering Manager

Internship Scheme usedGreen Consultants

“The green consultant student was tasked with providing a top level briefing for a gap analysis of our high tech start up business for plans to achieve ISO14001 in 2021. With her we worked up a plan for surveying the business though all the main stake holders. This work was then followed through and an excellent Executive Summary report with appendices showing main points for 14001, with linkage to ISO9001 (which we are working on this year). A very useful foundation document setting the scene for the future. The intern fully fulfilled the brief and even exceeded it by linking across to ISO9001.

The student worked flexibly and coped well with working around her exams and the additional challenges of Covid19. We had no issues and highly recommend the Green Consultants Scheme.”

Employer Case Study: EFFECT Photonics Ltd 

Name of Organisation:  EFFECT Photonics Ltd

Description of Organisation: EFFECT Photonics have been shaping the future of photonics by interconnecting humanity through fast, affordable, sustainable, and effective communication technologies. The emergence of DWDM is one of the most innovative and important phenomena in the development of fibre optic communication technology. From both technical and economical perspectives, the ability to provide the world potentially unlimited data transmission capacity and bandwidth is a massive advantage of our DWDM technology.

Name of Employer:  Tim Durrant

Job Title: Engineering Manager

Internship Scheme usedGreen Consultants

“We recruited an intern to work as a Green Consultant. She took part in various tasks which were completed excellently. They really helped with moving the business forward, this was then followed by a very effective hand over to the three month intern from the Sustainability Hub in Plymouth.

The Internship from Green Consultants at Exeter proved very valuable. It allowed some high quality focussed support to be brought to bear and accelerate the environmental policies and practices of EFFECT Photonics Ltd forward. The prior knowledge, enthusiasm, willingness to learn as well as contribute followed by an effective hand over for follow on will have a lasting positive impact on the business. Thank you.”

Employer Case Study: Coldharbour Mill Trust Limited

Name of Organisation:  Coldharbour Mill Trust Limited

Description of Organisation: Coldharbour Mill is one of the oldest woollen mills in the UK having been in continuous production since 1797. Originally owned by world-renowned textile producers Fox Brothers, the Mill took fleece from all over the world and transformed it into yarn, cloth and textiles. Today the rich heritage lives on as one of the finest working wool museums where visitors are not just able to relive the sights and sounds of the industrial revolution but also see crafts men and women making traditional textiles, beautiful knitting yarn and hand-woven rugs.

Name of Employer:  Peter Holdway-Bradely

Job Title: General Manager

Internship Scheme used: Green Consultants 

Feedback:

“We recruited an intern to work as a Green Consultant. He created a great carbon impact report which encompassed the work we currently do, what we could do in the future and some areas we had not yet thought of tackling.

He was very focused and dealt well with some of the areas where company knowledge or historical information was difficult to find. The intern was hard-working, focused and determined – and even pushed through when there were challenges in finding the correct information to analyse for the report.

We were very happy with the student’s work and with this experience and we hope that our intern would be able to say the same. Carbon Neutrality is something that the Board of Trustees is setting as an aim for the trust, and the Green Consultants work will be a great starting point as we embark on a more structured and focussed approach to our impact on the environment.

The scheme itself was very easy to work with and a great resource for organisations such as us, who may lack funds to focus on some of these key topics if this scheme wasn’t available. I would highly recommend the Green Consultant Programme to other companies.”

Employer Case Study: London Borough of Sutton Council

Name of Organisation:  London Borough of Sutton Council

Description of Organisation: London Borough of Sutton Council offers a range of statutory services to the local community.

Name of Employer:  Katrina Lloyd

Job Title: Sustainability Manager

Internship Scheme usedGreen Consultants

Feedback:

“We recruited an intern to work as a Green Consultant. The intern worked on a number of pieces of work including a schools food waste project where she was contacting schools to identify what collections were in place, who would be interested in a service and identifying suitable contractors to deliver the service.

The intern also complied a comprehensive set of data and statistics to support our communications work as well as, researching free and easy to access recycling schemes to promote to residents.

We had some minor technical difficulties, but the student borrowed a friend’s laptop and was able to overcome them quickly – usual problems with working at home and on new platforms.

The Green Consultants programme is a great experience, we have always been provided with an excellent calibre of student who have been hard working and delivered great results.”