Liam McGill on Sufu and Sustainable Small Business
Who: Liam McGill is the Co-founder of SuFu - a company helping SMEs measure and decrease their climate impact. Through their low-carbon network small companies can take the steps needed to reduce their emissions.
Why: SuFu has provided the environmental footprint data available for each of the veg in the Periodic Table of Veg. Follow their exciting work at @your.sufu.
Favourite veggie dish: Colcannon - a traditional Irish dish of mashed potatoes with cabbage.
1. Let’s start from the very beginning - can you tell me about your family and upbringing?
I grew up in Birmingham with my parents and sister. I had a very normal daily life of Catholic school and obsessing over football. I moved to Manchester for uni, which kicked off more adventures in Australia, Japan, Ireland, Spain and now Denmark.
I always knew I didn’t want to live where I was raised. I had friends in Australia so I took advantage of that as my first stop, then found a job in Japan, and after a short stint in Spain I found the perfect masters degree in Denmark, so I moved here.
2. When did you first learn about Climate Change?
An A-level geography teacher introduced me to the concept. I must have been around 16 years old. She was a big climate denier, but I loved her as a teacher. Some of my family are farmers, and around this time a cousin of mine described how the weather patterns had been changing just in his short life; how things fluctuated more than ever. These contrasting perspectives led me to look into the topic more seriously.
Farmers in Liam’s family shared their first hand experience with the perils of Climate Change.
3. What led you to pursue a career in climate impact consulting?
I was always passionate about geography and wanted to pursue something interesting and meaningful. I focused my bachelor on ice and weather science, and in studying ice came face to face with the realities of climate change, which led me deeper down this path.
My masters at the university of Copenhagen was incredibly interdisciplinary: people on the course came from diverse backgrounds such as ethics, climate justice and more. This made it really exciting and interesting, broadening my understanding of the subject beyond that of being simply a study in geography.
“Improving a company’s footprint is expensive and complicated. We want to make it possible for smaller businesses to take action.”
4. How did the SuFu come to be?
I founded SuFu with 3 colleagues from the Climate Masters Program and 3 Computer Scientists. We noticed there was a gap in the market: big companies such as McDonald’s have the budgets to invest in climate impact, but small and medium size businesses do not.
Our global target is to reduce temperatures by 1.5 degrees, and to do this everyone needs to be in action. Improving a company’s footprint is expensive and complicated. We want to make it possible for smaller businesses to take action. We started with a small pilot in a local Copenhagen restaurant, and the business has continued to grow and evolve from there.
“Complexity and lack of transparency in the supply chain makes it really hard to get reliable data and understand where the big opportunities for reductions exist.”
5. What has been most challenging about running Sufu?
Our greatest challenge has been communicating things in terms that are familiar to those who do not have expertise in the sector, to simplify complex concepts and technical jargon. For example: “fugitive emissions” is not a concept most people are familiar with, so we need to explain in terms such as “gases leaked by old units such as AC or fridges”.
It’s also been a challenge to show that we’re actually affordable: SMEs are always balancing the budget, so we really need to be able to effectively explain our value.
6. Why is it important for companies to monitor and share their environmental footprint?
It’s the only way we can meet our emission reduction goals. If every company calculated scope 1 and scope 2* emissions we could meet our goals. Complexity and lack of transparency in the supply chain makes it really hard to get reliable data and understand where the big opportunities for reductions exist. If we don’t take action to redefine and create transparency in the supply chain we can’t fully understand nor determine what we are up against.
7. Can you give an example of brand or company doing outstanding work?
We’ve worked with Original Coffee in Copenhagen and they genuinely care about their impact: they want to make a difference. They're looking at more climate friendly solutions and are implementing all sorts of initiatives. This doesn’t make them any money - they just do it because it’s the right thing to do. We’ve looked at waste emission and lifecycle analysis for them beyond simple climate analysis.
Left: The Original Coffee team showcasing their range. Right: Food and drink at The Original Coffee. Images from @originalcoffee.
8. On an individual level, what can people do to reduce their footprint?
I don’t believe we can tackle this huge challenge just on an individual basis. However, I am a big advocate of moderation: decrease your meat consumption (I’m eating 80% less than I was a year ago), switch your energy supplier when possible, reduce your food waste, decrease flying and use public transport.
“Consumers mostly interact with SMEs in their day to day life, so smaller businesses can play a huge role in driving education and awareness on the subject.”
9. So who can really drive meaningful change?
Corporations and large global players. We need a push to renewables and a reduction in fossil fuel consumption, but above all we need transparency in the supply chain so we can actually assess where and how we should intervene. We can pressure these players to adopt better practices, and this is where we can have the greatest impact.
I can be a pessimist at times, but we really need the big emitters to stop and reverse course if we want to achieve our goals, and this is simply not happening at the scale and speed we need.
SMEs can play a role too. Consumers mostly interact with SMEs in their day to day life, so smaller businesses can play a huge role in driving education and awareness on the subject.
The Sufu team researches and assess every part of a small business: from the fridges they use to the produce they source.
10. If you could give one piece of advice on how to achieve health in its physical and emotional forms, what would it be?
Learn how to relax. I used to constantly check emission indexes and climate reports, which caused me to never switch off and be incredibly stressed. COVID forced me to see that I needed to find ways to switch off, and I’ve realised now how important this is to health and happiness.
*GLOSSARY:
Scope 1 emission: Direct emissions by owned company sources. This might be the coal burner in a large factory. In SMEs these emissions are more rare.
Scope 2 emissions: Indirect emissions caused by the electricity, steam, heating and cooling of the company.
Scope 3 emissions: All other indirect emissions caused in the supply chain not related to energy. These might include things like the emissions caused by the bread a shop buys for their sandwiches. 80%+ of SME emissions are scope 3 emissions.
