Cathy Benwell

Co-Founder, A Good Thing

“It’s truly joyful to have a day set aside to celebrate the many wonderful things that women right across the world are doing in their everyday lives to change other people’s lives for the better.”

For this year’s International Women’s Day, we’re proud to launch a campaign that spotlights the remarkable women shaping our industry and community. Through a series of profiles, we are sharing the stories of inspiring women who are leading and innovating across our industry!

Read Cathy’s story below.

I’m co-founder of A Good Thing CIC, a UK-based nonprofit platform that connects businesses with charities. Our circular economy app allows UK organisations to give things away (anything at all!) to their neighbouring charities. Meaning less to landfill and more to a good cause. 

One of the biggest reasons for creating A Good Thing was supporting the hardworking charities that hold up our communities, and this remains at the heart of everything I do. 

I have never felt more fulfilled in my working life than I do now, working with amazing businesses and charities. 

It’s inspiring to run this reuse platform day to day, and to see the impact that can be made when businesses truly engage with their local communities. 

There have been so many on this journey with A Good Thing! 

Being on the Net Zero 50 List two years in a row was a proud moment (and being the only woman in the charity sector top 5 this year), in particular because of the way it recognises (by proxy) all that our platform has achieved. 

But our engagement with the branded merchandise industry has made me feel very proud: seeing this sector genuinely commit to sustainability through working with A Good Thing was a powerful moment. We realised that the vision behind the founding of A Good Thing can be (and is being!) embedded across sectors, helping more charities than we could have imagined. 

Everything I do is rooted in a deep desire to fight against injustices. This has been part of who I am for as long as I can remember, but it wasn’t able to really take shape until I moved into the charity sector with the launch of A Good Thing. My work with the brilliant and life-changing charity Home-Start has probably had the most impact on me and on my motivation to change things for the better. I was both a volunteer and a trustee for Home-Start; being part of that organisation taught me something very powerful about impact and about changing lives for the better. 

It’s truly joyful to have a day set aside to celebrate the many wonderful things that women right across the world are doing in their everyday lives to change other people’s lives for the better. 

It’s an amazing time be in (or be going into) the sustainability sector. There’s more awareness than ever before of the challenges, and a real willingness to make the changes that are needed at all levels of business and government. 

But (crucially) we need women’s voices to shape policies, initiatives and agendas: research consistently shows that women bring long-term and community-focused decision-making to the table. And that’s what’s needed to help make change stick, and to help move from ideas to implementation. 

If you’re considering sustainability as a career, I’d encourage you to go for it. It’s a unique way to support change on a global scale while also being hugely rewarding on a personal level.