He bought a new tuxedo and hoped he would be shaking hands with Princess Anne at the British Quality Foundation Awards held last night (Thursday) at the InterContinental Hotel in London’s Park Lane.
But 55-year-old Marlborough town councillor Richard Pitts, battling on behalf of his international company, Oracle against Marks & Spencer as finalists for the Sustainable Future Award, walked away empty handed.
“Yes, I was very disappointed,” he told Marlborough News Online. “But M&S had a team of 20 working on their entry. And I lost out, which is a shame.”
“Winning would have given the public an idea of what Oracle is doing in the world, which is very important when energy has become such a vital subject.”
Mr Pitts, who lives in Manton, is a trained biologist who went into IT software development when he was 28 and has since become a global specialist for mapping products with Oracle, where he has worked for the past 15 years.
He revealed his potential triumph at Wednesday’s annual meeting of the now thriving Transition Marlborough organisation, the community sustainability group he helped set up in the town and now runs the monthly Communities market.
And it is through that experience has been able to devote spare time at Oracle creating an energy reduction and sustainability programme given to all 5,000 Oracle employees in the UK.
“All my experiences in Transition Marlborough and my community work with the town council has helped me shape how we deal with sustainability in business,” Mr Pitts told Transition members.
“So I have a big thank you to say tonight to everyone responsible in creating and working with Transition Marlborough because it has helped me save energy within a huge multinational company that works in 164 countries.”
The winner of the Sustainable Future Award needed to demonstrate an outstanding environmental or social contribution to achieving a more sustainable world.
He/she also had to provide evidence of the positive impact on society such as energy saving, waste reduction, lower carbon emissions, community involvement and supply chain involvement.
Available at the AGM were copies of the booklet Mr Pitts wrote, entitled Sustainable Living and Working, that has been distributed to all Oracle employees in the UK with the aim of instilling a low energy, sustainable approach to home-working.