Carbon awareness: Does your team speak carbon?

Steph Housty, Head of Sustainability and Marketing at packaging compliance scheme Ecosurety and Carbon Literacy Trainer, shares her views on how carbon awareness is a key component to delivering net zero plans.

“Net zero targets”, “reducing our emissions”, “carbon footprint” – as citizens, we are increasingly familiar with this language, which we see more and more in the mainstream media.

At a business level, companies are often asked to disclose their carbon footprint and net zero plan for tenders and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting requirements.

Across all industries, lots of organisations are frantically busy setting up CO2e (Carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions reduction targets and building strategies to achieve them by the 2050 deadline set-up by the UK Government.

Creating a net zero plan is one thing, implementing it is another

Usually net zero plans include reduction targets on a company’s emissions hotspots.

For a service-based business, often the greenhouse gases categories ranking at the top in terms of emissions directly involve the staff – employee commuting or business travel, but also purchased goods and products for the company’s usage.

While for businesses in the waste management sector, it could be more down to transport and energy used in facilities.

However, creating a net zero plan is one thing, and implementing it is another, and this is where many struggle.

To implement your net zero plan and achieve your annual reduction targets, you will need your employees’ cooperation in changing the way they work.

You will need your staff to consider how they travel to work and meetings. Your logistics team might need to optimise transport routes.

Your budget holders might need to consider the carbon impacts of their purchasing decisions, whether they acquire new equipment, select an energy supplier, or switch pension providers.

In brief, to implement a CO2e emissions reduction plan you will need to engage your whole team in the delivery.

But do your staff understand what these carbon reduction targets mean? Do they fully understand why we need to reduce carbon emissions in the first place? Is your team aware of the scientific facts explaining how we got into this climate crisis? Do they know where CO2e emissions come from? Do they understand how they can play a part in reducing those emissions?

“What does it mean? Is it good or bad?” I have heard many times when I have shown the company’s carbon footprint overview to colleagues. Good point.

We can’t reduce our emissions significantly and fast enough if people do not actually understand what carbon emissions are and how they matter.

The reality is that the meaning of carbon emissions, despite being a buzz term, is often misunderstood or overlooked by many within businesses.

“Tonnes of CO2e emissions” are far too often just numbers in a carbon footprint report that is read by a few and does not mean anything for most.

Can we expect employees to change the way they travel, or the way they choose suppliers, the way they work, if they don’t really know why it matters and how they can make a difference?

Raising carbon awareness to encourage behaviour change

A critical success factor for sustainable behaviour change is knowledge. To have your staff on board with the delivery of the net zero plan, you need them to understand the “why”, the “how” and the “what” of this plan.

The importance of carbon awareness

A good place to start is carbon awareness. We’ve been delivering Carbon Literacy training at Ecosurety for a number of years now. It involves training your employees, customers and suppliers, to understand what carbon costs are and what are the carbon impacts of everyday activities at home and at work.

Carbon Literacy training gives them the baseline understanding necessary to help them talk confidently about climate change and empower them to spot opportunities in their role and team to influence, challenge or make decisions to help reduce the company’s carbon emissions..

Something I have noticed when delivering the training is how limited the knowledge is of where the carbon emissions lie.

Ahead of our carbon literacy training we ask participants to complete a short online carbon footprint survey, to assess in a few minutes how big their carbon footprint is compared to the average UK citizen, and the breakdown between home, food, travel, heating and things they buy.

Many participants are surprised by their emissions breakdown. Some didn’t realise the positive impact of walking to work on their “travel” score, while others realised the negative impact of having a badly insulated home on their carbon footprint.

For most, this exercise is an eye-opener helping to make a tangible connection between carbon emissions and their lifestyle.

Let’s make carbon tangible and connected to our daily actions.

We have witnessed participants riding an emotional rollercoaster during the course of the day-long training. Many go from despair when learning about the climate emergency and the consequences of it, to hope and agency when realising that they can actually do something about it on an individual level, both in their personal life and as part of their job role.

At all levels of seniority in the business, whether they are fresh new recruits or seasoned members of staff, we have witnessed lightbulb moments, as people take the time to step back and connect carbon with their actions.

And that’s when the magic happens. Once they ‘get it’, they can’t “unsee” the carbon. Suddenly, your sustainability team is not alone fighting for net zero, but all staff are there to bang the drum, make more sustainable choices in their job, and push the company to make the changes necessary to reduce its reliance on fossil fuel.

The procurement team switches to environmentally-friendly supplies, the sales team consider the most sustainable mode of transport when planning their visits to customers, the marketing team measures the carbon footprint of their communications, the facilities team cater vegetarian meals for company events.

The key is to demystify carbon emissions. Let’s make carbon tangible and connected to our daily actions. We know that we can’t achieve net zero alone, and employees are one of the keys to accelerating progress in emissions reduction. So, let’s make sure they speak carbon.

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