How to be a carbon reduction cheerleader

If being tasked with reducing your company’s carbon footprint wasn’t a challenge enough, encouraging your colleagues (you know the one) to cooperate with you is arguably more tricky. Carbon reduction, like all aspects of sustainability, requires a team effort - here’s what our consultants believe makes a winning carbon cheerleader 🤸

Get everyone on board

Before you start any sustainability project, communicate what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. This goes something like:

“We have a carbon footprint and we need to act now so that we don’t have one in the future. I’ll have yearly reduction targets that will require us all to tweak how we operate, so our business has a smaller and smaller carbon footprint. This won’t be a witch hunt, it’s just about making sure we’re a better business each year.”

People are far more likely to contribute to a project if they feel informed, involved and implicated in it. Sustainability work is a collective effort, every individual has a portion of personal responsibility - make sure to highlight this from the get-go.

Don’t feel like you need to be an expert

Sustainability is complicated, this means it’s easy to feel like a bit of an imposter. But remember, even the experts don’t have most of the answers. If you’re confused about carbon capture or baffled by Scope 3 supply chains don’t let it get you down.

Right now we need progress rather than perfection, it’s far better to start with something, no matter how basic, as long as you’re open to constantly improving it.

Decide your vision

Set a few clear goals. Choose one to be your north star and use it to guide all your plans and decision making. This makes communicating your raison-d’être simple.

We’d recommend: 1. We are going to measure our carbon footprint. 2. We’re going to reduce it by 7% each year. 3. We’ll be transparent and open to improvements (see previous paragraph - I’m not an expert!).

Set up a working group

Create a core group of carbon cheerleaders to share the workload. If anything, working in a team is just more fun.

Everyone will have a role to play in reducing the carbon footprint of the company. If the CEO thinks it’s all down to you, perhaps suggest a reality check.

Focus on the quick-wins and the win-wins

Make the changes that are easy and that benefit your colleagues or customers.

Say one of your suppliers has been making your life a nightmare, use the opportunity to swap them for a lower-carbon supplier so that the impact on the planet (and your sanity) is transformed.

Smart changes to reduce your carbon emissions not only benefit the planet, but also your colleagues and customers too.

Don’t be finger-waggy

Remember that feeling of your parents telling you to tidy your room and it instantly becoming the last thing on Earth anyone could even consider forcing you to do? If one thing leads to inaction it’s feeling like you’re being criticised or judged. When it comes to climate action, we’ve all got work to do, so focus on progress.