Mini Interview with SESI

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Rena SESI.jpg

Title

Mini Interview with SESI

Subject

Science, technology and the environment

Description

SESI are a social enterprise based in Oxfordshire which supplies sustainable detergents to shops, farmers markets, cooperatives and charity organisations. They also provide ethical foods and help to reduce people's plastic footprint by minimising and reusing packaging.

Rina of SESI
answers my questions on her ethical business and why she is so passionate about reducing waste.

Why did you want to get involved with minimising waste? Why is it such an important cause?

Like many other people (of any age), I was fortunate to have an upbringing where hardly anything went to waste, whether this were foods or any other resources. Whilst I could continue to live with a minimal impact through to adulthood, becoming a parent confronted me with the reality that this was not an individual problem but a community, national and global problem.

Our current problems with waste and pollution have been partly caused by a thirsty economic structure’s notion of ‘endless growth. Profit driven businesses with a culture of unaccountability do benefit from and push us into consumerism, exploit producers, create unrealistic and non-scientific Best Before Dates which lead to over-production, damage to land, farming crisis, overconsumption and food waste on one end, and food poverty at the other, all whilst creating single use packaging pollution.

The thought that both food waste and single packaging also contribute to a high carbon footprint were the decisive factors that lead us to action and to set up the School Ethical Supplies Initiative (SESI) in 2006. When we saw that no brand was willing to take the 20L tubs back which we used to purchase to refill people’s own containers, we researched ecological formulas and in 2013 developed and launched our brand of SESI household cleaning products. All this work has been done by 7 days a week unpaid work by the founders and the great participative commitment of our volunteers who have come and gone since the beginning of our journey. It was in 2018 that SESI actually set up as an LLP, and we are a worker partnership company with a democratic structure.

 

What are the keys things that do you as an organisation to try to make sure you have a positive impact on the world and the environment?

  • Grow our community lead network of refill stations towards the mainstream market. Currently we work with 400 zero waste stockists around the UK, and every week more people are joining our campaign. Regional SESI hubs are beginning to form across the country organically and that is just how we like it. We help refill well over a million bottles a year on detergents alone. With more products being refilled, the UK is well on the way to make a positive impact in the economy, in our communities and more importantly, in our ecosystems.
  • Design, build and innovate more of our green technology which can be made with reclaimed materials. Bicester Green are one of our CAG siblings who make our refill dispensers (CAGs is a Community Action Group Cooperative we are members of).  Our refill equipment (see this dispensers for shops), our warehouse, gravity filling equipment and our washing station (where we clean and refill our shops returnable 20L drums) has been designed and built by our team to minimise energy and water waste, and we create ‘in house’ solutions for our delivery logistic which includes providing pallet netting for customers to return their 20L drums of empty detergents in reusable nets rather than using the too often damaging cling films by the delivery industry.
  • Reduce food waste and cut down the carbon footprint attached to it, empowering communities to achieve food justice, minimising packaging pollution while doing so. We are aware that the way to reach out to the general public and make refills the new normal is by going beyond the ‘eco bubble’.  Apart from working with the brilliantly organised zero waste shops and cooperatives, SESI works with grocers, garden centres, mini supermarkets, farm shops, ironmongers, schools, company offices, the hospitality sector and anyone who reaches out to us, keen to reduce, reuse and refill across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and Jersey.

 

Do you have tips that people can use at home to reduce waste? What do you think are the barriers we need to overcome to make this easier for people?

  • Start small, be kind to yourself and celebrate your day to day goals. Start with easy changes that make it easier for you to increase new ways of shopping, swapping, repairing freebies. Avoid unrealistic blogs which gloss up the reality and that might make you feel like you can’t ‘get there’. Join zero waste groups (social media has a few) where you feel comfortable, included, not judged; this is not a competition, we are all on a journey and learning at our own pace.  As the brilliant Anne-Marie Zero Waste Chef says "We don't need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly."  The relationship between us and our planet can only grow into a fulfilling harvest if it comes from love and connection.
  • Corporate greenwash is a constant threat to authentic efforts by social enterprises, these copy and mimic leading concept which social enterprises struggle to develop without big funds, only for big players diminish concepts into half hearted practices which mislead the public. We often talk about the power of dirty marketing against education, and we can’t say it enough that to be the change we want, we need a culture of traceability, accountability and community participation, and this won’t come from corporations, this can be strengthen by supporting the small independent sector.

 

Apart from our close loop distribution of wholefood and household wholesale, we supply our ethical wholefood and households via Cultivate Oxford Cooperative. We also run a SESI Online Shop on the Open Food Network for Click&Collect services, in line with our solidarity economy with these partners in Oxfordshire: Added Ingredients (Abingdon); Sandy Lane (Tiddington); South Oxford Farmers MarketEast Oxford Farmers Market


Back to Sustainable Food Exhibition

Date

2021

Contributor

SESI

Publisher

Museum of Oxford

Creator

Tina Eyre

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