Ahmed Detta (Marketing, 2003, Pendle) explains how his quest for feeling good about profitability led to a career in sustainability.

"Lancaster was my primary University choice as I wanted to be part of a collegiate university system enabling me to be part of a community that would remain with me post-graduation. I chose to study Marketing as it was my favourite area of business and embrace a subject I really enjoyed.

After leaving Lancaster, I started my career in IT sales selling Cisco Systems and whilst financially I was ahead of the curve of all of my peer group, the success left me feeling empty. This quest for a corporate career went against the grain of my DNA – my parents always taught me to give back with their own charity work and I was in a real dichotomy about where to take my career. Could I remain a high flyer and still do something meaningful? This was the challenge I was facing that drew me in to kick-starting my career in sustainability, particularly focusing on plastics recycling.

In 2009 my career took a new direction and I relocated to Dubai where I was headhunted to set up a mobile phone recycling company. And that’s where the ‘aha’ moment came for me in that I could feel good about profitability. I started recycling mobile phones with charities such as Operation Smile where a recycled phone would give a child a smile for life. In essence, the cash rebate for recycling your old mobile would cover the cost of a cleft palate operation in certain countries. It was really empowering to be able to use discarded technology to benefit someone's life as well as protecting the environment. This experience made me even more determined to look at long term solutions for recycling and really identify the most damaging materials to our environment, which are ultimately plastics.

Fast forward seven years, I relocated back to the UK to set up Enviroo. My company is an award-winning start-up focusing on recycling PET plastic waste material to recreate food grade quality polymers to ensure 100% closed loop recycling.

My time at Lancaster inspired me to set up a recycling facility in the North West of England and the community approach of the University led me to embed this thinking in my work. Creating micro-circular economies across the country will contribute to a macro shift in our recycling behaviours and ultimately lead to an improved environment for us and generations to come."

https://greenaddventure.com/2019/09/09/podcast-episode-11-full-transcript-0/