Our Sustainability Journey
We’re already living and seeing the catastrophic effects of climate change. As businesses and individuals, we need to show up and do the work to drive meaningful change. It’s not enough to just state your ESG values, they need to be purpose-led from the inside-out and made a reality. But with so much information out there, it can be hard to know where to start. How do you cut through the noise to make sure the steps you’re taking are actually having a positive impact on the earth – and aren’t just greenwashing?
As a growing business that puts our people and the planet before our profit, we decided achieving B-Corp status would be a great place to start. To us, it’s about being held accountable to continually do better, and implementing these behaviours into our everyday life. But as a small business working in a hybrid way, we didn’t know how we could make improvements and found getting started on committing to change difficult. What actions could we commit to that would actually make an impact? How could we measure our impact and change our behaviour in terms of the way we work? How could we communicate our journey and be more transparent? We really wanted to commit to change and continue taking positive action, but we didn’t know how to turn that into something meaningful.
So, we wanted to start sharing some of the resources that we’ve found super helpful so far on our sustainability journey. Climate change isn’t an issue we can solve alone. By sharing this list, we hope we can inspire others to start somewhere and commit to change.
Start by committing to change – cut your carbon emissions to help the UK achieve net zero by 2050
Assess your positive business impact and work towards improving it
SME Journey – an introductory guide to net zero, carbon reduction opportunities and communicating commitments
- The Journey to Net Zero for SMEs by The Carbon Trust
Engage your employees in the climate conversation – help your employees measure their carbon footprint, understand their impact and take actionable steps to a more sustainable lifestyle
Find out if your pension is sustainable – pensions hold a lot of power and can help contribute towards climate goals. Research found a green pension is 21x more effective than common climate change actions such as switching to a renewable energy provider and stopping flying.
- Green your pension calculator
- Guardian: Pensions with intentions: a simple guide to sustainable investing
Assess the impact of your website on our planet – the world’s digital carbon footprint is larger than the carbon footprint of the entire airline industry
Actions to make working from home more sustainable
Marketing & Advertising – calculate the carbon footprint of ad campaigns and learn about actions that will make an impact within the advertising industry
- AdGreen Carbon Calculator
- AdGreen Resources Guide
- Marketing and Sustainability: Closing the Gaps Report by WFA
- The Ad Net Zero Report by Advertising Association
For the unavoidable emissions you need to offset – as a complement to your climate reductions, Ecologi can help your workplace become climate positive by funding really good climate projects and planting trees as an investment for the future
Further Insight and Learning
- Low Carbon Business School: Introduction to Low Carbon Business
- Future Learn: How to Measure, Reduce and Offset your Company’s Carbon Footprint
Articles
- Forbes: How Organisations can begin prioritising ESG Practices
- Worldfavor: What is the B Corp certification? Where profit meets purpose
Resource Lists
- The Green Pages by BIMA: understand, measure, and reduce your digital carbon footprint
- Climate Action 101 by Piotr Drozd: huge resource list that includes measuring tools, actions for individuals, books to read, pledges to take and conversation tips
- Carbon Trust resources for businesses and organisations: tools, guides, and reports to help businesses reach their sustainability goals
- MEASURE by followthefootprints.com: tools for measuring your footprint
Charlotte Davis, Insights Executive at The Magnus Club