Bentley Environmental Foundation

Hubbub is an award-winning environmental charity that’s all about inspiring action that’s good for the environment and for everyone. They bring businesses, organisations, local authorities and community groups together to create campaigns that make it easier and more possible for people to make choices that are good for the environment. In 2023, the charity delivered 49 projects, helping over 6m people think differently about environmental issues, and over 700k take action on it

Co-Created Project Overview: The Nature Network

The more connected we feel to nature, the more likely we are to do things that help to protect it. Recent Hubbub polling found that spending time in nature makes three-quarters (78%) of people feel better, despite this, a third of people in the UK (36%) spend less than an hour a week in nature. Through the nature network, our ambition is to bring people closer to nature and nature closer to people by supporting community-led green spaces to thrive. To do this, we will create, connect, support and champion a network of green spaces across the UK, launching in Summer 2024. This new network will offer funding, guidance, templates and peer to peer support to community groups who wish to establish new or improve existing green space.

Forum for the Future is a leading international sustainability non-profit with offices in London, New York, Singapore and Mumbai. For more than 25 years, it has been working in partnership with business, governments and civil society to accelerate the shift towards a just and regenerative future in which both people and the planet thrive. Forum is focused on enabling deep transformation in three game-changing areas: how we think about, produce, consume and value both food and energy, and the purpose of business in society and the economy.

Co-Created Project The Business Transformation Compass 2.0 

Initially launched in 2021, the groundbreaking ‘Business Transformation Compass’ (BTC) toolkit recognised that for businesses to step up on sustainability challenges, pragmatic guidance on making the business case for transformational change was critical. Businesses needed a framework for what it really means to move beyond conventional sustainability strategies to embracing ‘just and regenerative’ approaches that put people and planet at the heart of their response. And they needed support on where to focus across their key functions, from procurement and corporate affairs to human resources and marketing.

Three years on, what’s needed now are pragmatic case studies to highlight where and how businesses have put guidance into practice. That’s why the BTC 2.0, which the Foundation is proudly funding, is set to provide real-world examples from trailblazer companies who have taken steps towards a just and regenerative approach. The revised guidance will further equip leaders with insights, learnings, and the practical know-how to drive lasting change. Our aim is to inspire business leaders and to learn together. After all, the challenges we face are bigger than any one brand acting alone.

Funding from the Foundation will also enable Forum to put BTC 2.0 into the hands of tomorrow’s leaders. A step up in outreach will engage business schools to integrate the learning from BTC 2.0 into the curriculum and ultimately, equip future generations with the practical know how and mindsets to drive transformational change through the power of business.

1.2 billion people are still living in poverty, inequality is rising, and the world is failing to decarbonise quickly enough to avoid climate disaster. The world’s poorest people contributed little to climate change, yet they are most impacted, and least able to adapt. Through working in partnership, piloting innovation, and delivering systemic locally led projects, Renewable World enable people living in poverty to transform their lives by improving their access to clean energy, empowering them to develop sustainable and resilient livelihoods, and mitigating the impact of climate change.

Co-Created Project Overview: The Class Project

Nestled below Western Nepal’s Chure Hills, Banke National Park is home to rich biodiversity, and Baijnath Rural Municipality, within the park’s buffer zone, is also home to communities of Mughali and Tharu people, forcibly relocated here following waves of construction and the establishment of national parks. Loss of cultural heritage, traditional practices and livelihoods have marginalised this mixed population. Strict buffer zone rules determine the livelihoods of these communities, and they eke out a living by drawing on forest resources, whilst trying to grow crops and rear livestock in the face of wildlife attacks and crop raids. Based on the transfer of knowledge from existing projects alongside tailored, contextually specific activities, the CLASS project will pilot clean energy approaches to improve livelihoods, conservation, safety and sustainability in the Buffer Zone of Banke National Park.

Blue Marine Foundation is an ocean conservation charity dedicated to bringing the ocean to health by protecting and restoring marine life. Using a combination of top-down interventions to improve ocean governance and bottom-up project delivery that empowers fishers and local communities, their mission is to see at least 30 per cent of the world’s ocean under effective protection by 2030 and the proper management of the whole ocean. Their work is truly collaborative with a portfolio of over 45 projects spanning 14 countries. To date, Blue Marine has contributed to the protection of over four million square km of the ocean. 

Co-Created Project Overview: Helping to secure globally important and community-led marine protection.

The ocean is being depleted of life at a rate that significantly threatens coastal communities, habitats and species biodiversity, and the ocean's ability to regulate the climate. Given the chance, the ocean has the unparalleled ability to regenerate and restore itself. Using cutting edge technology, like marine acoustics and AI to identify animals and ships, the Bentley Environmental Foundation will be funding projects in the Caribbean, Mediterranean and Atlantic that establish and effectively manage marine protected areas globally to continuously protect extraordinary marine life and biodiversity in the oceans on which we all depend.

The Rivers Trust is one of the fastest-growing environmental movements in the world with a mission to protect, promote, and enhance our freshwater and estuarine ecosystems for both people and wildlife. They are a collection of conservation experts who work with member trusts in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, to make its shared vision a reality: wild, healthy, natural rivers, valued by all.

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Co-created environmental project: Regenerating valley brook 

The River’s Trust has identified Valley Brook, a small urban river local to Bentley’s HQ in Crewe, as failing water quality standards due to upstream inputs of nutrients from sewage and agriculture. Significant local issues such as flooding and air quality have also been identified in relation to the river. The Bentley Environmental Foundation will be supporting the Rivers Trust to safeguard and improve the Valley Brook River in Crewe, whilst also building the capacity, capability and environmental skills required to deliver long-term environmental improvements in the area.

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Through waste collection boats and the use of artificial intelligence to detect and analyse waste, everwave prevents plastic and other polluting materials from entering the oceans. The collected material is then recycled using environmentally friendly processes at sorting centres. Through events and community engagement they also aim to raise the public’s awareness of waste pollution. Since their inception, everwave has collected over 1.4 million kilograms of waste from rivers in countries such as Serbia, Thailand and Cambodia.

Co-Created Project Overview: River Clean up mission, Thailand

Healthy rivers are essential to human life, they provide us with drinking water, they are home to wildlife, and they provide recreational spaces for our health and wellbeing. This is why the Bentley Environmental Foundation have partnered with everwave on their clean up mission in Thailand. Through local partners the TerraCycle Thai Foundation, the project will clean up the most polluted river in Thailand, the Chao Phraya in Bangkok. Alongside this, the project will kick-start a brand new education program, raising the awareness of waste to local schools in the area. 

Climate Group are a global non-profit, with a mission to drive climate action, fast. They form and run powerful subnational government and business networks to unlock collective action and move whole systems to achieve a world of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Together, they work to shift global energy, transport, built environment, industry and food systems towards faster reductions in carbon emissions and a cleaner future through a range of climate solutions.

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Co-created environmental project: The Future Fund

The role of developing and emerging economy regions is fundamental in delivering a net zero world, and the Future Fund enables often underserved states and regions equitable access to global resources, empowering them to accelerate the shift towards a zero-emission world. From the development of air quality monitoring networks and off-grid lighting, to an easily accessible digital platform supporting and encouraging local climate action, the Bentley Environmental Foundation will be supporting the Future Fund through projects in Argentina, South Africa and Brazil

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The Biomimicry Institute empowers changemakers to create and scale nature-inspired solutions to address our most pressing environmental and social challenges. Its work demonstrates that through the conscious emulation of nature’s time-tested philosophies and processes humans can learn to create transformative solutions for the modern world that are in balance with nature. Inspiring change through original research, education for children of all ages and global innovations programs such as The Ray of Hope Prize, the Biomimicry Institute aims to help humanity use this principle within the fields of education, culture and industry – to address humanity's biggest challenges.

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Co-created environmental project: Ray of Hope Accelerator

Changemakers are often met with a deep valley of limited resources as they try to scale their innovations quickly to compete against entrenched, extractive competitors. The Ray of Hope Prize exists so that The Biomimicry Institute can support and amplify the work of changemakers leading us into a nature-inspired future. The Ray of Hope Prize shortens and flattens this valley via programmatic support and content creation, ensuring more nature inspired solutions create impact at scale. The Ray of Hope Prize program is a fully-fledged fellowship program that supports between 10 and 30 changemakers per year as well as start-ups that address the systemic climate and societal challenges.

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SeaTrees is committed to supporting local communities and scientists that plant and protect blue carbon coastal ecosystems. Blue carbon coastal ecosystems can be up to five and ten times more effective at taking carbon from the air than rainforests. SeaTrees aims to help regenerate our ocean planet by planting mangroves, restoring kelp forests, seagrass meadows, coral reefs, and coastal watersheds.

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Co-created environmental project: Restoring blue carbon ecosystems

Mangrove trees, seagrass meadows, and kelp forests have declined drastically due to climate change and human activities. Funding for this project will be used to expand the current programme in Kenya – one that seeks to restore 100+ hectares of degraded mangrove forest within Malindi Watamu National Marine Park and Reserve, whilst also scaling the project into Europe for the first time with seagrass and kelp projects in Portugal and Spain. The projects support the planting and protection of mangrove trees, seagrass meadows, and kelp forests through three local restoration partners.

Founded in 2014 and positioned as the world's leading resource for climate solutions, Project Drawdown aims to help the world reach "drawdown" - a point in the future when the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have begun to steadily decline. As the organisation behind the bestselling book Drawdown, the group rigorously assesses climate solutions, partnering with efforts to accelerate climate solutions globally. Ultimately, it's all about avoiding catastrophic climate change as quickly, safely, and equitably as possible.

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Co-created environmental project: Drawdown Capital Coalition

Project Drawdown has identified staggering disconnects between today’s climate philanthropy and investing, and the science-based solutions needed to effectively address climate change (including a tangible reduction of GHG emissions and keeping our planet below 1.5C degrees warming). In response, they are building a new Drawdown Capital Coalition, a first-of-its-kind convening for philanthropists and investors of all types to learn from the world’s leading scientists and engineers, with an open-source plan for far reaching influence and impact.