Sustainability can be a tough topic. It’s easy for individuals and businesses to get overwhelmed and bury their heads in the sand rather than just put a foot forward and take one positive step at a time.
Big group’s sustainability journey started through our partnership with a global client who had offices around the world with a fairly average carbon impact but, like many businesses, most emissions are in their value chain.
This particular client reports their activity through CDP, and that now extends to us as a key partner. Working with publicly quoted companies, we are now required to supply 3 large organisations with our carbon impact figures which in turn form part of their reporting.
As an agency, our first port of call was to understand more about carbon reporting and management – forever grateful to the BIMA Sustainability Council Cohort for the early insight and education. We partnered with Alectro, a carbon impact consultancy, to produce our first carbon emission impact report. The report investigated all areas of the business, from what transport employees use when they commute to our offices to IT equipment and office snacks. We even carbon assessed our 30 years in business summer party!
Having received our report, we discovered that our emission profile was already quite lean. In 2021 we had an average of 140 full-time employees, and our report showed 1.32 tCO2e per employee (below the expected interim target of 1.5 tCO2e/employee needed to reach UK domestic targets by 2030). A reason for the leanness is our brand new office building, The George, which has earned the architects several sustainability awards and is powered by a 100% renewable-electricity tariff.
As of December 2022, the company has grown to just over 170 full-time employees, so with this growth, returning to the office and travelling to meet our clients post-pandemic, we expect our carbon emissions to increase, but we’re ready. We work with Ecologi to offset the carbon we produce, and so far, this has resulted in 2690 trees planted and eight projects funded.
In 2023, we’ll receive our 2022 carbon report, and we’ll take the time to ensure we factor our findings into learnings. Our efforts to offset have made it possible for us to sign the United Nations Climate Neutral Now Project, the initiative highlights our continual work to achieve a climate-neutral world by 2050 and we’re proud to play our part and make it public
In our next article, we’ll discuss how sustainability has helped shape our culture and become ingrained in our value system. To hear more from big group, visit our site.