Delivering London’s Future Together - Interview with Sefinat Otaru from the Cross River Partnership

We interviewed Sefinat Otaru for Grow Smart Future, to talk to her about how she convinces London`s businesses to become more sustainable. We will post the video of this interview soon.

Hi Sefinat. Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Please introduce yourself and your role at the Cross River Partnership.

My name is Sefinat Otaru and I am a business engagement officer for Cross River Partnership. Cross River Partnership is a public-private partnership of local businesses and local government authorities. As a business engagement officer, it is my job to go out there, talk to businesses and encourage them to take sustainable actions,  to incorporate them into their business practices, basically to help make central London a better space for everyone.

What do you recommend when it comes to the service and delivery industry as sustainable choices?

When it comes to the services and deliveries industry, frankly they are already doing everything that they can to be efficient because for them it just makes business sense, but from a procurement point of view when businesses are looking at how they receive their goods and their services, there is almost always room for improvement, whether it is looking at retiming deliveries, consolidating their suppliers, reducing waste collections, using electric vehicles where possible or even just having personal packages delivered away from work and closer to home, there is always something that can be done. Cross River Partnership actually has a tool “deliverBEST” that helps businesses do that quite easily.

Have you seen examples of sustainable thinking in big business and how does your collaboration work with businesses in general

When it comes to the work that we do we work with businesses either directly or via our partners who as I mentioned earlier are either business improvement districts or other local government authorities, to take sustainable action. Our projects are designed to meet both social and environmental benefits, on the social side we work on getting long term unemployed back into work while on the environmental side or projects range from kings? Meeting in central London to improving air quality to carbon reduction.

Of the many small choices and changes individuals and businesses can make in their everyday lifestyle, what changes or in what area can we achieve the biggest impact when it comes to a more sustainable living?

When it comes to sustainable solutions unfortunately there is no one size fits all answer, individuals are different, businesses are different. However, as individuals, whether it is personally or professionally there needs to be more introspective, and really check ourselves before we take any kind of action. It could be as simple as asking yourself: Do I really need to take uber or can I actually take the bus or train to get where I need to, to “Do I need to receive that package at work or can I receive it closer to home. And there are tools out there for that. For example just by visiting clickcollect.london those options are made available to people in terms of what is most convenient to where they live.

Changes in business and lifestyle can go hand in hand with changes to the urban landscape. How do you see London changing over the next 50 years? 

This is a hard question in terms of how London is going to change over the next 50 years. Life always throws curveballs and the way we see things going, isn’t always how it is going to turn out in the end. However in the next 50 years, it is safe to say that London like most cities around the world is going to be a lot smarter, using technology, not just systems connected but also people. It is great for us because it means that we will probably be more on the pulse of things and therefore make better-informed decisions about how we live. But regarding what I said about curveballs disruptive technology means that there are probably things that we will be able to do that we can only dream of right now

Can you mention any big and common misconceptions that you have come across in your work? 

The biggest misconception that I run into in my work is small and medium-size businesses they feel that they alone cannot make a difference and so they tend not to change the way they operate. However, when just one business takes an action however small it actually does impact the neighbouring businesses and their partners. And when those businesses and when those partners also take action it spreads on. And so it is that what we find that what is supposedly a new behaviour eventually becomes the norm, but it does take one business to start it.

What do you feel works best when you have to convince businesses to change behaviour?

When it comes to convincing businesses to make a change,  because they are businesses it is very important to help them see that that change is at the very least not going to adversely affect their the way that they operate, not going to affect their bottom line and in the best cases actually going to save them time and money. But overall we do find that taking sustainable action tends to lead to better operations for businesses.

What in terms of ideas, laws, mentality or behaviour do you believe would have the biggest impact on sustainability in the capital and beyond?

In terms of what is going to affect sustainability in the long run I would have to say it is our mentality. The way that we think it basically affects our ideas, it affects our laws and so by raising awareness and keeping awareness levels high through staying on top of current issues as well as remembering lessons from the past, it really is our best chance to create a bright future not just for ourselves but also for future generations.

Thank you for the interview and your insights.
You can watch the playlist for the full video interview on YouTube 
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