Ask the right questions

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After working for a values-driven company that considered the impact of its decisions on customers and the planet, I was inspired to set up a marketing firm that did the same. I run my business to be authentic, tenacious, responsible, and pragmatic. We do things for the right reasons and make sure nature and the environment are considered in everything we do.

When I was writing the content for the company’s website and thinking about why people should work with me or buy my products, it became even more apparent that I should be doing everything I could to reduce the environmental impact of the business.

Saving paper was the first thing I did. Introducing scannable, digital business cards was one of the ways I did this. I then looked at making bigger changes to reduce the company’s carbon footprint.

After getting a subscription for a carbon calculator, I discovered that there were so many more things I could do to protect the environment. Thinking about what you can and can’t change is a good place to start. It was difficult for me to reduce the amount of electricity I was using but amazing to discover I could offset this by changing the way I travel and adopting a remote working policy.

I’ve already made a lot of changes in my personal life to reduce carbon and give back to nature, so it doesn’t feel overwhelming to do the same at work. My husband and I do our bit, including using solar energy, planting a wildflower garden on the driveway, cutting out single-use plastic and easting less meat. I’m also leaving a donation to WWF in my will.

There’s also a lot of help and support out there for individuals, employees, and businesses if you look for it. For example, Nottingham City Council provides all the equipment needed for the litter picking scheme I set up at work. This gives me the chance to give back to the community by volunteering to pick up litter on Fridays.  

My long-term aim is to become a B Corp, a company that achieves high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. Carbon footprint measuring is part of it, so we’ve made a good start, but I may have to outsource the work needed to meet all of B Lab’s requirements.  

Everything I want to achieve can’t be done overnight but I’m committed to doing as much as I can every day. Every little change makes a difference. 

As a sustainability manager for a housing partnership with 12500 homes, and 10,000 green spaces, I believe we can make a real difference for climate and nature. 

My work is incredibly varied. I work in several areas, including carbon reduction, educating colleagues, sustainability in the supply chain and supporting biodiversity. 

When I started, one focus area was to get the business to see that green spaces can be just as valuable as our built assets. In 2023, we successfully secured over £8m in government funding to install external wall insulation to over 730 homes. Alongside my fantastic colleagues, we started to assess how we could improve the surrounding green space that sits alongside these homes. We were successful in securing funding to plant 180 trees across our neighbourhoods, investing in our green spaces as well as our customers’ homes. To develop sustainable communities, we must look at the wider community, which I believe LHP are placed perfectly for.  

We’ve also embedded biodiversity KPIs into our procurement process, which now considers a range of environmental, social and governance issues. This means that all grounds maintenance contracts for green spaces must deliver benefits for nature, people, and wildlife. We now create five new spaces to support biodiversity every year and carry out green audits to ensure nature habitats can thrive. In addition to this, we have also set the ambition for 30% of our green spaces to be managed for wildlife by 2030. 

Biodiversity is a mainstream topic of conversation for us now. It’s not possible to secure finance without disclosing environmental, social, and corporate data, otherwise known as ESG reporting. Biodiversity is not just a tick box exercise, it’s a key consideration across our decision-making process. 

Considering a wide variety of needs and perspectives has been key to the success of our work on sustainability. Some smaller businesses in our supply chain told us that they didn’t have the time or resources to tackle something as vast as sustainability and biodiversity. To support them I’m issuing guidance on how to achieve net-zero and providing information on the free resources available to SMEs. 

I set up a sustainability ambassadors’ group to help interested colleagues improve their knowledge and become sustainability leaders for the organisation. The group meets monthly and hears from external speakers and sustainability experts to ensure that we are continually developing our knowledge as a team. 

We also deliver carbon literacy training to help employees understand what we’re doing and why. As part of this training, colleagues can help spark ideas for campaigns and wider engagement events, for example a neighbourhood litter pick. Group activities like this are great for wellbeing and often inspire people to do more for the environment. It can be hard to get people to take that first step to get involved and take time out of their day, but once they do, they never regret it. 

Sustainability and biodiversity issues are only going to become more important. The work we’re doing now is an important part of our employees’ personal development and will help future-proof their careers. 
When it comes to getting customers on board, it’s important to start conversations about sustainability and nature as early as possible before any work has started on site. It’s about managing expectations. For example, it’s important to explain that an area planted with wildflowers won’t provide colour all year and will have cutting and mowing restrictions. Signs with QR codes are an effective way of providing more information and getting feedback from customers.  

If you’re at the beginning of your sustainability journey as a business, take inspiration from what others are doing. Think about what you can learn from them and take those learnings back to your organisation. 
 

I’m a Senior Sustainability Analyst at OVO, and our response to the climate crisis, Plan Zero, has sat at the heart of what we do. We need to ensure that we have a natural world that is protected and can also support reversing the impacts of climate change!  
 
At OVO, we knew it was important for us to address this. Firstly, we set a plan to align to TNFD and by creating a clear and concise case, we got business agreement to become early adopters of TNFD. I am really proud that OVO is just a handful of UK companies that have agreed to do this before it becomes regulatory.  
 
From this we have started to kick off our nature assessment. Using available tools such as ENCORE and the SBTN (Science Based Targets Network) screening tool we have conducted a high-level impact assessment. This will allow us to prioritise areas of materiality and engage relevant stakeholders in the business.

My background is in academia, in physical chemistry. I discovered my passion for Sustainability when I joined Reckitt three years ago as an R&D Associate working in Air Wick’s Front-End Innovation team. My role was to help design Air Wick’s future air fresheners that would not only meet consumer needs but make them better in terms of their sustainability profile. 

Last year, I had the opportunity to take part in a "Skills for the Green Transition" academic programme. It was a very enriching journey that provided a global view of the environmental problems and challenges we face and revealed how environmental sustainability is impacting markets and organisations. This made me even more excited to play an active role in driving green initiatives.

Air Wick and WWF started working together in 2021. Recognising the journey the brand had been on with the ambition to restore biodiversity globally, I was curious to understand whether there was anything that my peers and I, as an R&D community, could do to reduce the environmental impact of our own labs and offices.  
 
This is when we established the Sustainability of R&D Continuous Improvement Team (CIT), as one of the many initiatives across Reckitt aimed at embedding sustainability into the way we work. I also soon became the Air Wick SIC Champion, using Reckitt’s Sustainable Innovation Calculator (SIC) to ensure that upcoming Air Wick launches have a lower environmental impact than current products.  
 
We do rigorous testing during our R&D product/fragrance development to ensure consumer safety and to meet our quality standards. We use many products in our laboratories, which cannot be reused or distributed. We decided to look at this waste stream and see how we could reduce it. Due to the internal electrical components of some of our products we needed a partner that was experienced in the separation of complex materials for recycling. We identified a local waste management company to work with to convert our waste into new items like plastic tables, chairs and plant pots. 
 
Another focus area of the team is using communication and education to spark creative and sustainable thinking. To keep our Air Care colleagues up to date and to inspire them with the latest sustainability launches, we distribute a weekly Sustainability newsletter. In 2023, 49 newsletters were sent containing 308 sustainability-related articles. Finally, we engaged with the community by running a workshop with local school children to explore recycling, the various recycling symbols and local recycling capabilities.  
 
When it comes to waste disposal, we had to understand where the different waste streams ended. Then we had to decide which processes we should focus on, based on feasibility, cost and environmental impact. Finally, we had to look for an external partner that could provide the service. 
 
We worked closely with Reckitt’s Waste Management team to understand the waste disposal process. Finding a local waste management hub very near to our R&D site was key to minimising the emissions generated from shipping the devices to be recycled.