Biodiversity at the heart of TDP's Kings Award win

On Wednesday 15th May the Wylde Connections team was honoured to be invited to join TDP Recycled Plastic Furniture in celebrating the company's well-deserved win of the Kings Award for Enterprise: Sustainable Development and receiving their award from the Lord Lieutenant and Deputy Lieutenant for Derbyshire. ?

As I walked into the room where the celebrations were being held, I was both surprised and humbled to see a huge, framed photograph of a wolf resting on a stand at the front. This was later presented to the Wylde team to thank us for our support as TDP’s sustainability consultants and for our part in helping TDP to achieve the highest awards accolade in the UK.

The wolf was a wild she-wolf that I had photographed in 2008 on an expedition to the Northwest Territories in Canada. It’s one of my favourite nature photographs that I’ve taken in the many years I’ve been working in wildlife conservation and seeing it in its almost life-size glory was an emotional moment for me.

TDP managing director Rob Barlow and I share a similar passion for biodiversity and nature. He and his wife Anna have been on numerous citizen science research expeditions to Antarctica, the Maldives, Canada and Alaska and have taken their own stunning wildlife photos so he instinctively knew the ideal gift to present to us.

It is heartening to see a business focus on the importance of biodiversity as this is still too rare a thing in corporate world. It's also inspiring to see how this is now helping to shape the thinking around new and innovative product design, with a range in nature products available in the TDP range. These include hedgehog houses, bird boxes, bird tables, wildlife friendly planters. This is in addition to the design and manufacture of outdoor furniture which keeps plastics in the value chain instead of polluting land and oceans. TDP has had a significant impact on this score and has great ambitions to do much more.?

TDP is one of many clients we work with who are leading the way on sustainability, and collectively they are achieving some amazing results in terms of their positive impacts. The Kings Award ceremony is one of those moments that makes the work we do worthwhile when a client receives the recognition they deserve for all their hard work in making a difference.

Walking into the crowded room for the ceremony and suddenly seeing that wonderful photograph of “my wolf” was truly amazing and one of the proudest moments of my life, and that one gesture alone is testament to the mindset of a business leader who has always had strong values at his core, and who manifests these values throughout the whole business. It was perhaps a small thing, (and it was something noted by others too), that Rob, Anna, Kym and Luke made sure that the whole TDP team had pride of place right at the front of the audience, with each and every member of staff receiving their own personal awards.

Well done to the TDP team on achieving the Kings Award for Enterprise for Sustainable Development. But perhaps more importantly well done for caring so passionately about the wonderful and rich biodiverse world we live in and going to such great lengths to take action to protect and conserve it.