We are really proud that it’s now been 5 years of measuring our Carbon Footprint as part of our continuous journey towards achieving and maintaining Net Zero status. This accreditation represents our true low carbon credentials as a sustainable business, and more importantly the impact it has had. As part of our aim to continually improve, we’ve now been recognised as a Carbon Neutral Plus Organisation, which means that we’ve gone beyond neutral, offsetting more than we use.
Learning and growing from our experiences, we are pleased to say that our footprint has reduced by 70% from where it stood in 2019 – now standing at 61.75 tonnes of carbon excluding Purchased Goods & Services which were not measured in full detail in previous years.
Our comparative emissions have increased slightly from the previous year, reflecting an ongoing return to travel post-pandemic to support projects. However, this still marks an 85% reduction in travel based carbon emissions from 2019 levels as we limit travel, and make the most of remote meetings on projects as much as possible. We continue to look at ways of reducing our footprint further, with a focus on sustainable IT procurement and continuing to develop our sustainable travel policy.
This year, we have also measured our Scope 3 emissions in more detail than ever before. This was a key priority from last year’s assessment reflections and includes, for the first time, measuring the carbon impact of all of our Purchased Good & Services including surveys, visualisations and other sub-contracted services. At this stage, this is only an estimate based on generalised DEFRA data, but it shows that this is the majority of our Carbon Footprint at 55%.
This highlights the need for all consultants and service providers to work on minimising their own carbon footprints, so as carbon measurement develops, we can all have a positive impact on the planet.We are still in a position where we have to offset our carbon to achieve Carbon Neutrality. We have made the decision to offset our base carbon footprint, in addition to the Purchased Goods and Services, plus the 30% margin of error – all in line with SBTi guidance, which we are also committed to.
This includes offsetting an additional 30 tonnes of carbon over and above our carbon footprint, together with the planting of 50 new trees. As such, we have purchased Carbon Credits to cover 180 tonnes of carbon, selecting projects which are Gold Standard Accredited and which go beyond carbon reduction to influence on the UN Sustainable Development goals to have positive impacts on poverty, gender inequality, clean water provision, affordability and biodiversity.
