Prince's Start campaign to host UK green business summit

The Prince of Wales' latest environmental campaign, the Start initiative, today announced it is to host a major sustainable business summit this autumn designed to help British companies plan for greener growth.

The nine-day summit will be hosted in partnership with IT giant IBM this September, and will convene about 120 senior business and public sector leaders, along with academics and environmental experts, to discuss how sustainability can drive economic growth.

Caroline Taylor, vice president of marketing, communications and citizenship at IBM, refused to disclose the names of attendees but revealed that Start has already secured the attendance of a number of high-profile policy and business leaders and is also in discussion with the new coalition government.

Many big businesses have already incorporated elements of sustainability into their strategies, but IBM UK chief executive Stephen Leonard said he hoped the summit would generate new ideas for companies looking to accelerate their green plans.

"A big piece of the answer lies with collaboration which has now become a necessity," he said at this morning's launch event. "Companies may already know what they want to do, but don’t know how to get there without collaborating with others... Or perhaps they've already reached a level where they have done everything they can do themselves but now rely on cross-industry collaboration to really achieve sustainable business outcomes."

Each day of the summit will focus on a different issue, with the outcomes published as reports on Start's web site. Topics covered will include the future of cities, energy, transport, the information revolution and supply chains.

The Start initiative was launched at the beginning of this year and hopes to encourage sustainable living through positive messages encouraging development, rather than what it calls the traditional "doom and gloom" approach to tackling climate change.

The Prince of Wales has established himself as a vocal campaigner on environmental issues and has repeatedly urged businesses to play a more proactive role in helping to cut carbon emissions through his Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change.