Port Cygnet Cannery (2019 - Present)

Port Cygnet Cannery  is situated 50 minutes drive south of Hobart in Cygnet, Tasmania. My family and I purchased the building which was formerly an apple canning factory and has now evolved into a hub of food, beverage and agricultural businesses. Leveraging the extraordinary range of local craftspeople, the premise itself has also become a display of their creativity and skill.

Our intention is simple enough – we want to encourage and support prosperity, quality of life and strength of community for the people of the area, with a particular focus on those who seek to make a living from the land. We want to encourage small farm agriculture and related producers by supporting their people, products and businesses. And we want to promote them to the Tasmanian community and to visitors from around the world.

The Cannery is supplied by our family’s Gardners Bay Farm, 140 acres of mixed pasture, orchard, market garden and bush. It is a developing multi species integrated farm that aims to showcase how efficient and productive well managed, small scale agricultural systems can be. Our plans include an extensive market garden and orchard, rotationally grazed beef (with a soil carbon measurement programme), free range layer chickens and pastured pork. The farm is run by a small group of experienced farmers with varied backgrounds. Our farming decisions are influenced by a wide range of different practices from permaculture principles to holistic management but most of all we strive to create systems that work in harmony with the natural ecology of Southern Tasmania.

Disruptive Consulting (2017 - Present)

Disruptive consulting was formed in 2017 by myself and long-time friend, colleague and agitator Joakim Bergman. After years spent collaboratively and separately trying to influence businesses to address sustainability at the speed and scale required, we concluded that we needed to encourage the market disruptors to take on the old incumbent industries whose activities have brought our economy, our natural world and our civilisation to the brink. Part of this is getting the market to support those disruptive companies, both the new comers and those iuncumbebents already leading on sustainability, to transform their own industries, and make money at the expense of the laggards.

That’s why we formed Disruptive Consulting. We support large companies - that are already leaders in sustainability - to disrupt and transform their own markets. We help them to make money at the expenses of competitors who are sustainability laggards. To accelerate, and then win, the market race to sustainability.

 
 

EasyBeingGreen (2005 - 2007)

From 2005 to 2007, Ecos Corporation owned Easy Being Green was transformed from an ambitious but struggling start up, to a very successful business employing over 200 people. This innovative company broke new ground globally using carbon trading to drive mass consumer action on energy efficiency. I served as co-CEO with Founder Nic Frances and together we helped build a team who delivered energy efficient lighting into over 600,000 households. In doing so it achieved 4,300,000 tonnes of CO2 reductions and established domestic energy efficiency as a mainstream consumer and policy priority opportunity in Australia. Easy Being Green’s operations were suspended in November 2007 when the NSW State carbon price collapsed and the company was sold. This also led to the sale of Ecos Corporation because of Easy Being Green related debt.

Although with the collapse of the NSW State carbon price these businesses failed by traditional criteria, they were great successes in social entrepreneurship, dramatically breaking new ground and showing the way for many other businesses to follow. The example of Easy Being Green’s success led to much stronger State and Federal government programs in energy efficiency, including for low income households. It also led to many new companies being established and now succeeding in this area.

 
 
 

Ecos Corporation (1995 - 2008)

Ecos operated as a very successful business for 13 years. We built a team of twenty incredibly committed and skilled professionals working around the world advising companies on how to see sustainability issues as market forces and integrating them into business strategy. Our clients cut across all sectors and many countries, with companies like DuPont, Ford Motor Company, Diageo, BHP Billiton, WMC, ANZ Bank, Insurance Australia Group, China Light and Power, Zurich Financial Services, Placer Dome, KPMG, and Anglo American.

Ecos and its extraordinary team of people, achieved a great deal both for our clients and by proving the concepts we were advocating. Whereas most players in the business and sustainability space in the 1990’s were coming from theperspective of corporate social responsibility, we argued that sustainability was now a market issue - that getting ahead of the issues was protecting the business and creating new growth opportunities. We helped great old companies like DuPont and Ford shift their giant organisations to be ready to face a new direction. We achieved practical success like helping new start-up Easy Being Green, grow to over 200 staff and cut over 4 million tonnes of CO2 in just 18 months. We helped to shift the attitudes of leaders in the business community. We stayed focused on our purpose, enjoyed ourselves and did some good.