What a year. Of course everything has been dominated (again) by Covid, but to me 2021 was so much more. As I’ve reported here many’s a time over the last 12 months, business has been booming here at Terra Infirma. About 10 years ago, I made the decision to focus on big-game changing Sustainability strategies rather than incremental approaches to Sustainability and found that ‘the market’ (ie big public and private organisations) was interested, but many were not quite ready to take the plunge. Now, despite (or quite possibly because of) the Covid crisis, everybody wants a Sustainability strategy – and I’ve been rushed off my feet.

In the last 12 months, I’ve been delighted to work with The North Group, Sharpsmart and the North East and North Cumbria regional NHS on Sustainability strategies, and with the University of Northumbria and TEDCO on supporting several hundred small and medium-sized businesses, while continuing to work with long-time clients such as NHS Blood & Transplant. Our Corporate Sustainability Mastermind Group has continued to meet online and Green Academy has brought in an international audience once again. In the background, our online Green Jujitsu course has been quietly training a couple of hundred professionals every month across the entire planet. Not bad for a home-based one-man-plus-associates-band!

On a personal level, it’s been an up and down year, not least with the family catching Covid in the autumn (I don’t recommend it, even fully vaxxed-up), but I squeezed quite a lot of fun in too, with two lovely family breaks in Scotland and Yorkshire, several mini-adventures including hiking into the Knoydart peninsula (there is no road) and ‘bikepacking’ the length of the Tyne, and a rather luxurious long weekend in Paris with Mrs K. The one lesson I have learnt this year is you don’t need to go far to have a great time – sometimes you just have to look more closely at the familiar to find the fascinating detail underneath.

Anyway, before I get too philosophical, I’d just like to take this opportunity to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and an even more Sustainable New Year!