BUSINESS BIO

Where are you based? St Austell, Cornwall

Key business markets: People – a mixture of those seeking education and those seeking entertainment

Annual turnover: (08/09) £18.7m

% of turnover which is trading income (as opposed to grants): 80%

Number of employees: 437 (full-time equivalent)

www.edenproject.com

ambassadors

Tim Smit

Tim Smit
  • Eden Project

  • 56

  • Co-founder

  • Cornwall

It’s created £1bn for the local economy, helped a major construction company change the way it operates and turned a host of young people into business innovators. Welcome to Eden…

Take a redundant hole in the ground, add imagination, determination and dreams the size of Jupiter – voila! An environmental visitor destination and education centre of world renown.

While you’re at it make sure that it practices what it preaches when it comes to sustainability, that it has a scrupulous local purchasing policy that pumps money into the local economy and forces its suppliers to go green.

Welcome to Social Enterprise Ambassador Tim Smit’s lovechild – the Eden Project.

He describes walking into his workplace every day like “walking into a candy shop”.

“It’s a place that’s very optimistic and as a project it has a rounded personality, all aspects of life can be discussed here and are relevant to it.”

Tim may sound like a philosophical gardener but his vision has created an enterprise with a turnover of just under £20m per year. Over the last eight years the enterprise has stimulated the Cornish economy to the tune of £1bn.

In the area of employment alone the Eden Project has created the equivalent of 437 full-time jobs – in the summer around 600 people receive a pay packet.

Jessica Ratty is one of those people. She started working at Eden as a waitress in 2001 and is now a press officer.

She says: “Instead of quitting college and walking into a job where I was unnoticed due to my lack of qualifications I found myself in a place where the staff are inspirational and the people I work with support individual talent and personal aims.

Instead of quitting college and walking into a job where I was unnoticed due to my lack of qualifications I found myself in a place where the staff are inspirational and the people I work with support individual talent and personal aims.

“I am not the only person to be grateful for Eden being on my doorstep. Eden has reinvented the reason for coming to Cornwall, leaving room for growth and hope in the land of seagulls and pasties and pulling along the tourist industry, the hospitality industry and small business practices behind.”

Tim is determined to have a positive impact on business practices and that determination contains an element of ruthlessness.

“All our suppliers have to be waste neutral after 18 months. We’re not being mealy-mouthed and saying we’d prefer this – we actively drive it and it’s amazing how the promise of money encourages good behaviour.

“It also makes people smarter. They end up producing less and less packaging for us and that’s something they can apply across the board. For example, The McAlpine Partnership (Sir Robert and Alfred) have built all the buildings at Eden and on the last one, “The Core”, the brief directed a zero waste strategy; they now put in the infrastructure to do that on all their buildings.”

Meanwhile, Eden is not only having an impact on established businesses but also on the entrepreneurs of the future. Eden sponsors business competitions in schools, effectively creating social enterprises because the profits from the businesses go back to the school. In fact, the non-toxic resin used on Eden’s famous eco-surfboards was invented by one of the school groups involved.

“If you sell enterprise as a solution to problems then kids can get really excited – and after all, this is Cornwall – kids surf.”

Quick Facts

  • 70,000 children a year come through the Eden Project in formal groups.
  • There are 2,400 suppliers to the Eden Project, 90% are from the local Cornish economy and all have to be ‘waste neutral’ after 18 months.
  • In its eight years of operation the Eden Project has generated £940m for the Cornish economy, not including its own building and operation costs. Tim says this is more than double the amount of money received from Europe for the entire South West of England in the same time period.

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