The Net Zero Award

Yvonne has been instrumental in the development of the Forest & Peatland Programme which supports the University’s Net Zero by 2040 ambition to sequester 1,000,000 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. This involved purchasing three sites totalling 891ha, and entering long-term partnerships to create woodland and restore peatland over 4,500ha.

Yonne has worked in close partnership with local communities to ensure the woodland design delivers multiple benefits – including enhancing biodiversity, celebrating local cultural heritage, and teaching and research opportunities.

She has also been influential in the identification and setting up of multi-decade partnerships with landowners across Scotland. This has allowed partners to realise their own ambitions for sustainable woodland expansion and habitat restoration. This in turn has contributed to rural development, employment, and opportunities for rural business diversification.

Providing a greener, leaner, safer, smarter way of transporting building materials, The Pallet LOOP is shifting UK construction from the current approach of 'delivering, distributing and discarding' pallets to the principles of ‘recover, repair, reuse’.

After lobbying the construction industry to adopt its circular economy pallet reuse scheme for several years, The Pallet LOOP is now delivering change. The company’s distinctive green reusable pallets are now transporting bagged plaster and plasterboard products for British Gypsum – one of the biggest building material manufacturers in the UK.

The Pallet LOOP’s use of RFID tags is particularly innovative. Scanning pallets in and out of its sites provides accurate information about the number of pallets issued to customers and recovery rates. Scanning also gives returning companies fascinating insights about the financial and carbon savings they are achieving by using LOOP.