Sustainable Design in Practice

We’re back! After a short break to re-organise, we’re excited to be putting on another raft of interesting events.

We’re delighted to welcome Sean Polden, Founder of Last, and Ned Gartside, Sustainable Design Lead at Defra, to GTSW.

Sustainable Design in Practice – How Product Design, Business Models and People Interact

There’s plenty of discussion around the sustainability challenges of our age, along with systems thinking and abstract frameworks for designing a better future. Less attention is given to the practical realities of implementation, particularly in hardware and product development.

Sean doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but drawing on his engineering background and experience across design, product sustainability, corporate sustainability, and startups, he’ll share practical lessons from his journey so far, including:

• A pragmatist’s guide to product sustainability
• What he learned about sustainability in a corporate setting
• How business models influence design for sustainability
• Last – the story so far

About Sean

Sean studied mechanical engineering and spent seven years at Dyson working across design, product sustainability, and corporate sustainability. He now runs his own startup, Last, which designs modular, repairable small kitchen appliances.

Outside of work, Sean enjoys DIY projects, cycling, and spending time in nature.

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Incorporating Sustainability into the Digital Service Assurance Process in UK Government

This talk explores the work being done to incorporate sustainability into the digital service assurance process across UK government.

Until now, UK government digital services have been assessed across a range of factors, including usability, accessibility, inclusivity, security, reliability, cost, and the ways of working of the teams building them. In 2026, Defra introduced sustainability into the process.

This requires teams to explain what they have done — or are planning to do — to reduce the environmental and social impacts associated with technology use, alongside the wider offline aspects of services.

The session will explore how the team adopted a highly iterative approach to developing the process and guidance, aiming to make sustainability considerations accessible for teams completely new to the topic.

Topics covered include:

• A joined-up sustainability process, guiding teams from initial sustainability risk assessment through to formal Service Assessment
• The format and purpose of the Sustainability Statement, allowing teams to document actions, constraints, and trade-offs between sustainability and other priorities
• Guidance covering the full range of sustainability actions, including decarbonisation, circularity, resilience, and social impacts across multidisciplinary service teams

Attendees will also hear about plans to develop this into a wider cross-government approach, along with the challenges that still need to be addressed.

About Ned

Ned is the Sustainable Design Lead at the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). His work focuses on building the ecosystem of guidance, tooling, governance processes, and training materials needed to help teams design and operate environmentally and socially sustainable services.

Originally trained as a service designer, Ned previously worked at Defra on services focused on material reuse, recycling, waste crime reduction, and enabling the transition to a more circular economy.

Before joining Defra, he worked within startups before moving into agency and consultancy roles delivering projects for larger organisations.

Schedule

• 18:00 – Scott Logic doors open for in-person attendees
• 18:30 – Event welcome
• 18:40 – 60-second introductions for in-person and online attendees to introduce themselves, ask for help, or share something interesting
• 18:50 – Sean Polden (Founder, Last)
• 19:15 – Ned Gartside (Sustainable Design Lead, Defra)
• 19:35 – Q&A
• 19:50 – Round-up and close
• 20:00 – Continued networking for in-person attendees at LeftHanded Giant

We’re aiming to record the event, where possible, with recordings and slides made available shortly afterwards.

Sponsors

This event is made possible through the kind sponsorship of:

• ADLIB Recruitment
• Bristol Digital Futures Institute