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Industry Conference on sustainability
Achieving sustainability – progress with profit

In May 2011 Garden Organic held a conference, attended by some 90 delegates from the garden retail industry, Defra and other opinion-formers, called ‘Maximising profit in a sustainable world’. Our aim was to stimulate debate in the garden retail sector about the role of the industry in leading the public to greater awareness of and adoption of sustainable living habits whilst still remaining profitable and vibrant. We believe that the speed of change to achieve a sustainable future has been too slow and that there is neither clarity nor uniform opinion as to what it means.

This event was a beginning. We feel that our next most important step is to react to the positive response we had from industry and move things beyond discussion. We need a forum to reach a rapid consensus on what collectively we believe sustainability to mean and how the garden industry, working with government, Garden Organic and specialists in the field can serve that desirable destiny. Open minds and collaboration will be essential to achieve that aim.

These pages present much of the action from the day and we hope that you find them useful background in future dialogue and decision-making.

‘This debate is too important to set aside for tomorrow. We need to make rapid progress on reaching a common understanding of what we mean by sustainability and the unique role that the garden retail sector can play in stimulating real change to sustainable living’ – Bob Sherman, Chief Horticultural Officer Garden Organic

Click here for a more in depth report of the responses from delegates

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DAY ONE

Friday 13 May – 10am – 4pm