CREST23 Sustainability Impact Award acknowledges companies taking a leading role to make a positive impact on people’s lives through their products, services, wellbeing policies, supply chains, location, investments or through business models.
This award will be presented to an organisation that is consistently improving people’s lives through its day to day business practices.
This award has seen the highest number of entries in both 2021 and 2022 compared to all the other categories in CREST Business awards. As a result, it has been divided into two categories:
1. Smaller businesses with a turnover of under £1million – sponsored by the Institute for Sustainability
2. Larger businesses with a turnover including and above £1million – sponsored by Holdsway
Previous Winners
The finalists in CREST22 Sustainability Impact Award, sponsored by Surrey BNI were:
- The Lightbox
- Bare & Fair
- Croydon Gymnastics
- Clandon Wood Nature Reserve & Natural Burial Ground
- Goldsworth Road Dental Centre
- Switchfoot Wealth
The overall winner was Clandon Wood Nature Reserve & Natural Burial Ground
Simon Ferrar, Founder of Clandon Wood Nature Reserve & Natural Burial Ground says:
“Winning this award validates everything we are doing.”
Clandon Wood was created as a sustainable alternative way to care for our dead.
The initiative transformed a barren, set-aside stretch of farmland at West Clandon into a 31-acre Nature Reserve, flourishing with wildflower meadows; young, native broadleaf trees; two ponds and wetland.
It provides families with help and advice in planning a funeral service and provides an option to how we can reduce our environmental impact with our end-of-life choices.
Clandon Wood also hosts free, family support events like Tea Cake and Company, Compassionate Friends Candlelight Remembrance and a Memorial Xmas Tree event. It supports small businesses and charities by offering the Glass Pavilion for a charity donation.
Its landscape, created just 10 years ago, is now a wildflower meadow reserve that captures three times more carbon than woodland.
It has planted 350 metres of new hedgerow in 2022 and supports around 1000 species/varieties of flora & fauna. It is supported by a burgeoning Trust Fund for the future.
Clandon Woods does not accept the practice of embalming. It uses biodegradable coffins and shrouds while encouraging UK sourcing. It only accepts UK sourced memorialisation using naturally occurring materials, has its own water supply and its own sewage treatment plant.
Among its many award successes, it has been awarded Cemetery of the Year – Natural Burial category 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Clandon Wood is licensed for marriages in the Glass Pavilion, reflecting the circle of life through the four seasons.