Booming eco startup scene cements Bristol's credentials as green city

A downtown district of Bristol mainly populated with commercial warehouses and scrap metal yards isn’t where you’d expect to find an urban farm. But Grow Bristol isn’t your average farm. Run out of recycled shipping containers, it uses innovative ways to sustainably farm fish and salad vegetables, to sell direct to Bristol’s consumers and to the city’s restaurant trade clients.

“We’re talking about food metres, not food miles,” says Dermot O’Regan, one of the company’s founders. The business uses hydroponic and aquaponic systems to grow leafy greens and farm tilapia, with the waste from the fish used to feed the plants. The enterprise is still in early stages – O’Regan explains that they’re just getting ready for their first sales – but he’s confident there’s an appetite for what Grow Bristol has to offer among the local community.

“It’s not only sustainably produced, it’s also as fresh as you can get,” he explains. “It’s very nutrient dense. Things like salad and herbs lose their nutritional benefit as soon as they’re harvested. Even if they’re grown in greenhouses in the UK, they travel a long way [to the supermarket]. What we’re offering is harvested the same day as it’s on your table.”

Startups like Grow Bristol – socially and environmentally conscious, sustainable and engaged with the local community – are a common feature of the Bristol small business landscape. Bristol has a long heritage as an environmentally engaged city, with the headquarters of major non-governmental organisations including Sustrans, The Wildlife Trust and the Soil Association all based there.

The city also boasts a variety of co-working initiatives and thriving small business incubators, as well as the major urban redevelopment of the Temple Quarter enterprise zone, which will boost office space and infrastructure for businesses in order to attract 17,000 more jobs by 2030. All this has created fertile ground for startups with an eco agenda. “Through our membership base we have noticed two trends emerging,” says Monika Gierszewska, the centre director for the Bristol SetSquared Centre, a tech small business incubator. “Innovations in smart buildings and smart cities, making our environment greener and more sustainable, as well as activities boosting local economy and communities.”

“I think Bristol has been in many ways a real testbed for new ideas,” says Oliver Mochizuki, co-founder and CEO of Fundsurfer, which connects social, environmental and creative startups with finance from crowdfunding and investors. For example, he says, the country’s first large scale social investment tax relief fund (SITR) was launched in Bristol. The Resonance Bristol SITR fund, which takes advantage of tax relief legislation to help Bristol-based social projects generate investment, was founded last year by social enterprise support organisation Resonance. The fund recently announced £80,000 investment in urban farm the Severn Project.

“Bristol has such a vibrant green community,” explains Anna Guyer, founder of Greenhouse PR, which specialises in communications for businesses or projects in the sustainability or social responsibility space. She founded the company 11 years ago, and for a decade ran it as a virtual network of PR professionals across the country, before deciding to set up a headquarters last year.

Bristol, she says, was an easy decision. “We thought about London but I think prices are prohibitive,” she says. “Bristol has quite a high presence of marketing, social media and digital people.” Those practicalities aside, the culture in Bristol suited Greenhouse. “There’s a huge network. We’re part of the Women in Sustainability network, which is Bristol-based and they have events every month. There’s a lot of networking, and a big support system for people who share those same values.

“If you look at places like Brighton, Cornwall, and around Cambridge, there are some pockets that are interesting, but nothing like Bristol. It’s got the food sector, banking, business, technology, and it’s got this massive outreach to the south-west.”

Last year Bristol’s credentials as a green city were cemented when it was named European Green Capital for 2015 by the European commission.

Unfortunately, the title did not come with any funding from Europe, so Bristol City council invested in generating sponsorship. According to the council’s sustainable city and climate change manager, Alex Minshull, around £11m was secured in funding from government and commercial sponsors such as KPMG, transport company First Group and construction firm Skanska.

Funding was split across a wide variety of projects throughout the city, from engaging local businesses to implement small changes, to working with schools to teach sustainability across the whole curriculum.

O’Regan was one of the small businesses to feel the direct benefits of 2015. Grow Bristol partnered with Incredible Edible Bristol, a community project that grows vegetables in the city’s green spaces, and urban bee keepers Bee the Change to secure a £50,000 grant, which was used to develop a Bristol food trail running between urban food growing sites, as well as to help fund Grow Bristol’s farm.

Although it’s too early to see if there has been a quantifiable increase in green startups as a result of the European Green Capital year, Minshull thinks there’s been a positive shift in attitude among businesses towards making more environmentally friendly choices.

Mochizuki agrees that 2015 has raised the profile of sustainability issues, making his work an easier sell. He says: “I think we’re all in tune with the fact that everybody has to step up to the plate and do more for the environment.”

He also thinks it’s helped put Bristol on the map, and with a high-speed rail line due to go live next year that will connect Bristol with London Paddington in 78 minutes (shaving 22 minutes off the current journey time), plus the well connected Temple Quarter enterprise zone a few minutes’ walk from the train station, many in the city are banking on an influx of both business and talent in the coming years. “I think it’s going to be an important place in the next 10 years,” Mochizuki predicts.

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