By Mark Hughes - Group Chief Executive
It’s no secret that there is a climate emergency. We’ve seen record high temperatures over the last few years and scientists have determined that human activities are the main cause of this.
At the Growth Company, we’ve set ourselves a target of achieving Net Zero by 2035, across scopes 1-3, verified by the Science Based Targets Initiative, with any remaining carbon offset using the Gold Standard Offset scheme, ahead of the UK 2050 goal.
Despite the challenges, we know we need to do as much as we can as quickly as we can. It aligns with our purpose. We can't help people, businesses and places unless we help them with this. It’s important to our service users, our colleagues, our commissioners but ultimately, it’s the right thing to do.
I remember when I was in school in the 70s the phrase Reduce, Reuse, Recycle was used a lot and that definitely stuck with me. I’ve always been aware to some degree but I think mostly it's in the last 15 years when I've become increasingly conscious, especially within my role here at the Growth Company as Chief Executive.
As such a large and diverse organisation we have the potential to not only make a difference for ourselves but have a positive impact on the thousands of businesses, learners, service users and partners that we engage with every day.
Since 2011, our GM Business Growth Hub has supported businesses to save 2.4 million tonnes of CO2, through our Green Skills Academy over 300 individuals have gained new skills in green technologies since it opened in January 2023, our employment services have embedded green champions across its programmes and our green business services are supporting the growth of the green economy in Greater Manchester and beyond.
Progress we’ve made so far at GC
We aim to be recognised as leaders in climate action by placing our environmental impact and becoming net zero at our corporate core, supporting our colleagues to adopt environmentally sustainable behaviours and identifying new ways our business activity can make a positive impact.
Net Zero is a part of every aspect of our organisation as a social enterprise. It’s in our corporate plan and we have set a challenging objective that requires all parts of our organisation to work together. In doing this, we’re holding ourselves to account through our carbon reduction plan, and we’ve already reached many milestones along the way.
In March this year we received reaccreditation for ISO 14001, demonstrating our proactive approach to managing our environmental impact. We use green tariffs for all energy we directly purchase, we’ve carried out major work replacing existing lighting with energy-efficient LED lighting across some of our largest sites, and any new property we take on will have to have a minimum EPC rating of C.
By putting serious work into mapping our CO2e emissions, where they exist and how much they contribute, we’ve been able to identify the areas that need work and better focus our efforts where they matter most.
The final hurdle
We have a clear plan of action in place for reducing our Scope 1 and 2 emissions and we’re making good progress. Scope 3 is our biggest challenge as these emissions, such as those in our supply chains, are beyond our direct control. A 2023 CDP report showed that only 41% of companies reported on their Scope 3 emissions. By tackling this challenging area, we’re demonstrating our commitment to Net Zero.
In our latest report (April 2022 – May 2023), our Scope 3 emissions made up 90% of our overall carbon emissions and the biggest contributors within in this were our suppliers and commuting and homeworking.
We’ve stepped up our procurement criteria to make sure that all our suppliers are also taking Net Zero seriously. By embedding sustainability into our contracts from the start, we encourage suppliers to map their own emissions and refer them to additional resources to share best practice.
We can’t meet our ambitions without our people. The dedication and enthusiasm of our colleagues is the key to overcoming this challenge and it's great to see the initiatives and activities happening across the organisation already.
We launched our internal travel and homeworking survey to better understand our carbon footprint relating to these activities, which we’re pleased to see has been completed by 800 colleagues.
The Environmental Awareness training module we launched last year has been completed by 97% of colleagues and beyond that 238 have completed the additional Carbon Literacy Training as well, allowing us to achieve bronze accreditation. This training helps colleagues to make proactive pledges to reduce their carbon footprint, both in a personal and professional setting. We each have a responsibility to do what we can and support each other to keep going.
Small changes can have a big impact
I took part in the Carbon Literacy Action Day training sessions alongside 60 colleagues in December last year, and it was inspiring to be in a room with people from different parts of the business to learn from each other and talk about the opportunities we have to make a difference, even on an individual level.
The training emphasises the importance that individual actions can have, we have over 1,600 colleagues at GC so if everybody makes one small change it will add up to a big impact.
For me, I drink and buy a lot of tea and coffee, so a pledge I made was to boil only the water I needed and buy a reusable cup to cut down on disposable cups, just one disposable coffee cup has a carbon footprint of 16g CO2. But beyond my pledge, the training made me think about a lot of other areas. We had a debate about meat free days during the session and I’m now down to only two meals a week including meat, but I’m also thinking a lot more about where the food I’m eating comes from.
The embedded awareness across all our actions is the key outcome of the training, and that’s ultimately what we’re aiming for. Empowering our colleagues to take action for themselves, which will not only help them but also impact us as a whole organisation and allow us to play our part in the climate emergency.
On June 5th, it’s World Environment Day and we’ll be hosting a webinar, come along to learn more about how you can reduce your carbon footprint and support our ambitions.