We cornered Becki Clark, one of our Senior Consultants, to find out what she is passionate about and why she carries around cutlery wherever she goes.
What is your area of focus in Perform Green?
BC: What I bring to Perform Green is what I call “sustainability of place“. I work in areas such as energy, waste, moving things around – such as transport within a place and from outside to a place – that includes connectivity. It sounds a bit like placemaking, attracting and retaining talent in businesses. In crude terms, it is like the inputs and outputs of a city – keeping it healthy and functioning. What I do is apply technology in just the right place to keep the city functioning in tip-top shape.
What is it about this idea that has sparked your interest and drawn you in?
BC: I have always been drawn to working on stopping waste. It has always felt wrong to me that we over-use resources in the way that we do. I am also talking about the waste of talent, wasted opportunities, wasted lives really. Resources can have more than one role and can be reused again and again. So can places – there are a lot of rundown areas of the UK that just want a purpose again. People are incredibly adaptable too … with the right support and learning, they can adapt to new challenges over and over again.
As a scientist I know the systems we create and use dictate the outcomes more often than not – it is nurture rather than nature that drives outcomes. Taking the opportunity to fix those systems so they get us to the outcome we want is a big part of treating national crises like obesity, education, climate change and more.
There are background things places need to function – moving things around, getting and treating fresh and wastewater, disposing of waste and recycling resources, access to energy. Connectivity is also one of these. This is the infrastructure of place, without which you cannot build businesses, schools, homes, lives. Placemaking and crafting is an art and a science, but it starts with the basic building blocks. I do the unlocking and helping encourage the services bit of helping it come together but I hope in some way I’m enabling the next wave of social capital, community potential, better public health and well-being. I want to be a good ancestor! It sounds very top-down “We want you to live good lives”, but in reality, people will follow the easiest path, and it is up to the people in charge to make the easiest path the right one from a societal point of view.
What’s the most exciting upcoming development in this area that has caught your attention?
BC: 5G … because enabling connectivity at low latency high bandwidth can enable change at a systems level. Plugging the gaps in connectivity is going to do a lot to address social inequality and, in a way, that brings opportunities to the individual in an absolutely unprecedented way. Opportunities we have never even conceived of hitherto … “we have never been able to do it like that”. For example, the evolution of a market town is that you have a town within walking distance of all these farms so they can bring their goods to market. Well, now the market and the customers are coming to you in your home – in a way that has never happened before – and this will lead to amazing new things.
What project or type of project has been your favourite to work on with Perform Green?
BC: I really like projects where you work with interesting problems and usually, these go hand in hand with great people who have ambitions for the greater good. These people tend to be really motivated and engaged and so I like working in a team like that. I have worked on projects with a regeneration focus, ones which are all about dissemination of cutting-edge research and with a product development focus. An opportunity to work with these really fabulous folks where I am bringing a new perspective or help connect some things together or introducing new skills add an engine to drive things forward.
Interesting projects I have worked on include a regeneration project with the Isle of Wight, dissemination of research project with the FCC and a product development project with the Food Standards Authority.
If you had £1 to invest in an outcome where would you spend it?
BC: For smart waste – we’re seeing some popular movement toward cutting down use of plastic and its starting to be the cool thing to do. Bioplastics might be having a moment, but I really do want to bring about a culture where we reduce the need for stuff by looking after things more, making it normal to carry around a set of cutlery and a cup and act like the island we are when it comes to moving and handling waste. It needs to start somewhere though and the waste industry is ripe and ready for digital transformation.
And high street – for placemaking in general – I think we’re going to see huge transformation to the British high street. I’m really excited for it – I see it as an opportunity to open it up to all sorts of services and businesses, from all walks of life, so that the high streets become hotbeds of innovation (based on the principle that innovation is driven by openness and by new ideas crashing and smushing together). We might also see some outcomes from the idea that if you design for small children, you design inclusive healthy spaces for a lot of the population.
… those are the areas where I would put my pound.
About Becki
Becki Clark is a senior consultant with a background in the environmental, energy and sustainability sector. She has over 10 years of consulting experience on a wide range of projects from regeneration, social capital and community potential, placemaking, dissemination of research, through to product and systems development. Described as a ‘doer’, Becki has been responsible for project and budget management through the whole project lifecycle. She regularly writes and presents reports, making representations on behalf of clients to regulators and authorities. Read Becki’s full biog here.
