GTSW Event: Sustainable Design Special

When: Thursday, May 21 · 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM BST
Where: Scott Logic, 1 Redcliff Street · Bristol

RSVP here on meetup.

Green Tech South West are back! After a little break to re-organise we are excited about putting on another raft of interesting events.

We’re delighted to be welcoming Sean Polden (Founder, Last) and Ned Gartside (Sustainable Design Lead, Defra) to GTSW.

Sustainable Design in Practice – How Product Design, Business Models and People Interact

There’s plenty of talk about the sustainability challenges of the age and much discussion of systems and abstract frameworks to design a better future. But less is said of the practical aspects of what happens in practice, in particular with hardware.
Sean doesn’t claim to have all the answers, with his engineering background and experience in design, product and corporate sustainability and more recently in the startup world, he hopes to distil and share the useful bits of what he has learned on his journey so far, including:

• A pragmatist’s guide to product sustainability.
• What he learned about sustainability in a corporate setting.
• How business models influence ‘design for sustainability’.
• Last. – the story so far.

About Sean

Sean studied as a mechanical engineer and spent 7 years at Dyson working across design, product and corporate sustainability. He now runs his own startup, Last, designing modular, repairable small kitchen appliances. In his spare time when he isn’t doing DIY, he enjoys cycling and spending time in nature.

Incorporating sustainability into the digital service assurance process in UK government

A talk about the work being done to incorporate sustainability into the digital service assurance process in UK gov.

Until now, UK government digital services have been assessed for a range of factors -including usability, accessibility, inclusivity, security, reliability, cost and the ways of working of the teams building them. In 2026, Defra has introduced sustainability into the mix. This requires teams to articulate what they have done or are planning to do, to reduce the negative environmental and social costs coming from their use of technology, as well as wider ‘offline’ parts of services.

Come along to the talk to hear about how we took a (very) iterative approach to developing the process and guidance to try and make this as easy as possible for those totally new to the topic!

Covering:

• A joined up process for sustainability, taking teams from a sustainability ‘risk assessment’ right through to being assessed for what sustainability action they have taken at a formal ‘Service Assessment’.
• The format for a ‘Sustainability Statement’, which is intended to allow teams the flexibility to record actions planned and taken, as well as the constraints they face, and any trade-offs between sustainability and other priorities
• Guidance on the full range of possible sustainability actions, covering not just decarbonisation but circularity, resilience and social impacts, across all the roles involved in service teams.

You’ll also hear about how we plan to take this forward to become a wider, cross-government approach, and the challenges we need to address going forward!

About Ned

Ned is the Sustainable Design Lead at the UK’s Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). In this role he focuses on developing the ‘ecosystem’ of guidance, tooling, governance process and training materials that teams need to design and operate services that are as environmentally and socially sustainable as possible.

A service designer by background, Ned previously spent a few years at Defra working on a service that aimed to boost material reuse and recycling, combat waste crime, and enable the shift to a more circular economy. Before that, he worked as a designer in a startup or two before moving on to projects for bigger organisations via the agency and consultancy world.

*** Schedule
🔓 18.00 – Scott Logic doors open for in-person attendees
👋 18.30 – Event welcome
📢 18.40 – 60 second intros – a chance for in-person and online attendees to introduce themselves, ask for help or share something interesting
💚 18.50 – Sean Polden (Founder, Last)
💚 19.15 – Ned Gartside (Sustainable Design Lead, Defra)
❓ 19.35 – Q&A
🗓️ 19.50 – Round-up and close
20.00 – In person attendees can continue networking at LeftHanded Giant

We’re aiming to record the event (if possible) and will be recorded and available with slides shortly after.

This event is made possible by kind sponsorship from:

ADLIB Recruitment
Bristol Digital Futures Institute