Our sustainability journey…..one step at a time

I couldn’t find a lot of clear sustainability information online, after much searching the first good resource I found was the ICAEW Green Business Guide and the content on conducting an environmental review. It laid out the framework for the main categories we should look into – Energy, Waste, Consumables, Projects and Suppliers. This helped me form an internal audit process looking at where we were as a company and what we could change to make things better.

Shortly afterwards I met with a friend who had recently completed a master’s degree in sustainability. He explained to me about some simple sustainability principles – the funnel metaphor, the triple bottom line and nested systems. He lent me a book (that I really should give back!) by Bob Willard titled The Sustainability Champions Guidebook, this helped form my understanding and explain my findings to the rest of the company about exactly what sustainability can mean to businesses.

We slowly started to change things, our paper supplier, our power settings, our tea (this was a topic of much debate!) and even our search engine. In April 2018 the ‘Green Team’ presented where we were to the rest of the company. As the year progressed, we made more small changes and looked at how we could implement better energy consumption and re-use existing resources in the new office space we were planning. We attended sustainability exhibitions, organised a company beach clean and invited Steve Malkin from The Planet Mark to talk to us about the bigger picture. Finally, it seemed like something had clicked.

At the start of 2019 we’ve put sustainability at the forefront of our agenda. We’ve set ourselves some big targets that we want to hit by the end of the year and are thinking more sustainably about everything we do. It’s even forming how we review the company’s purpose and helping us to map out its future progression.

All this started with an email, an idea and a desire to make things better. It has progressed through small steps engaging with every employee over the course of one year. Just thinking what we’ve managed to change in the last twelve months feels great and makes me optimistic for the future. We’ve only just begun!