From Purpose to Action: How Pinwheel is Reimagining Corporate Climate Impact
Author: Freddie O'Shea Publish Date: May 28, 2025
When Gavin Sheppard co-founded Pinwheel, it wasn’t just about building another climate tech platform. It was about transforming the way businesses fund climate and biodiversity solutions, and how they engage with those investments to drive measurable impact.
In a recent episode of the Blue Earth Podcast, Gavin sat down with our co-founder Guy Hayler to unpack Pinwheel's story, mission, and momentum. From a career rooted in pro-social marketing to co-creating one of the most innovative climate platforms in the market today, Gavin's journey is a lesson in purpose-led business evolution.
From the Grid to the Green
Gavin’s path to Pinwheel began at Smart Energy GB, where he helped digitise the UK’s energy grid as Chief Marketing Officer. That experience laid the groundwork: "It gave me the professional insight that I wanted to do something in sustainability, and the personal realisation that I wanted to start something from scratch again," he says.
His core question? What can businesses do now to accelerate climate action?
That question led him to explore the carbon and biodiversity markets, discovering £11 billion in annual corporate spend that was often under-leveraged, poorly chosen, and seldom linked to business value. "It was being treated like a tax," Gavin recalls. "There was little to no return for the brand or its people."
Enter Pinwheel: A New Standard for Climate Action
Pinwheel was built to flip that model on its head. Their platform enables brands to support only the highest-quality projects across carbon removal, biodiversity protection, and nature-based solutions—and to do so with full transparency and engagement.
"We're not just focused on carbon credits. We back second-gen removal, keystone species, habitat regeneration—the full spectrum," Gavin explains.
The model is simple, yet powerful:
- Projects: Hand-picked, deeply vetted investments in ecological and climate impact.
- Platform: A high-tech, brandable interface where businesses can track, showcase, and optimise their contributions.
- Persona: A hands-on, client-first approach that treats sustainability like the strategic asset it should be.
Turning Compliance into Opportunity
In an era of ESG scrutiny and greenhushing, Gavin believes businesses must move from a "compliance mindset" to an "opportunity mindset."
"You never do your best work when you're thinking about ticking boxes. You do it when you're trying to do something meaningful," he says. "We help businesses make the most of their sustainability investments, for the planet, yes, but also for their brand, their team, and their customers."
Clients like Wimbledon and HH Global show how that works in practice. For Wimbledon, it’s about transparent, global impact with a clean project portfolio. For HH Global, it’s about deep employee engagement, giving teams across 60 countries a say in which projects they support. The result? Record-breaking participation and staff satisfaction.
Blue Earth Ventures Welcomes Pinwheel
We’re proud to welcome Pinwheel to Blue Earth Ventures, our curated ecosystem of ventures, investors, and advisors driving practical, scalable impact.
Pinwheel is exactly the kind of business we want in the room: high-growth, deeply thoughtful, and committed to systems-level change. And with a 500% revenue jump in 2024 and 40+ clients already onboard, they’re just getting started.
As Gavin puts it: "If we can take even a portion of that £11 billion and channel it through high-impact projects with real engagement, we can change the game."
The Road Ahead
For Gavin and the Pinwheel team, success isn’t just about growth, it’s about helping brands do the right thing, in the right way. That means marrying behavioural science with cutting-edge tech, and making sustainability feel not just responsible, but inspiring.
"If someone chooses a sea turtle preservation project, they become an advocate for it. That’s the magic. That’s where the real impact lives."
We couldn't agree more.
Meet Gavin and the Pinwheel team at Blue Earth Forum this June during London Climate Action Week, and find out how your business can turn purpose into real-world progress.
Explore Pinwheel: https://www.pinwheel.earth