5 tips to help reduce your company’s carbon footprint

According to a 2016 CONE report “64% of Millennials won’t take a job if their employee doesn’t have a strong CSR policy, and 83% would be more loyal to a company that helps them contribute to social and environmental issues”.

So, becoming more sustainable can help your company to attract the best talent and help you keep your top-performing employees for longer.

Here are 5 ways to reduce your company’s carbon footprint

1) Measure your emissions

Driving change in employee behaviour is easier when you can point to a specific metric that you are trying to reduce.

Measuring your emissions can be hard but once you have a baseline in place it becomes easier to manage and keep track of each year.

There are several resources like the SME Climate Hub or Net Zero Climate to help you get set up.

2) Switch to a green energy supplier

Ensuring your electricity is from a renewable source can save up to a quarter of the company’s carbon footprint overnight.

With so many renewable energy providers in the UK, switching to renewable energy has never been easier.

3) Change your company commuting habits

Analyse your employees’ current average journey length, mode of transport, and total distance to help determine which type of initiative would work best.

You can implement a Cycle to work Scheme to reduce commuting emissions and boost employee wellness.

You can also continue to encourage working from home.  If everybody was able to work from home for just one day a week, it would save around 1% of global oil consumption for road passenger transport per year.

Offering a season ticket loan for bus and rail travel can help employees save up to 20% of their costs by buying an annual ticket instead of a monthly one.

4) Use greener software

If you are a services-based company, your team will probably be using laptops and software.  Depending on the provider that you use and the location of their servers, this can have a significant impact on your carbon footprint.

There are some sustainable alternatives. For example, Google runs all of its technology on renewable energy so your servers can be 100% carbon neutral.  Apple has started to publish the emissions that are generated for each of its laptops and is working to ensure the materials they use are more sustainable.

As a policy, you can also have schemes to recycle or even refurbish any hardware that is being used within the company.

5) Change your pension scheme

Switching your pension can cut carbon 21 times more than going veggie, giving up flying, and switching energy providers.  Get in touch with your pension provider to see if they have a specific climate fund to invest in.