The Carbon Smart blog
by Carbon Smart
Carbon Smart, founded in 2007, is a well-established, independent sustainability consultancy working with private and public sector organisations globally on social and environmental issues. We recognise that each business has a unique sustainability challenge – to reduce its negative impact, increase its positive impact, and realise the commercial benefit of doing so. We work to find the clear, practical sustainability strategies that contribute to a better world and to the bottom line for each of our clients.
With the simultaneous advent of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive (EU NFR) over the course of the last 18 months, environmental reporting is being driven into the limelight in boardrooms in a manner it has seldom seen before.
Plastic is everywhere: it is in the air we breathe, in the water we drink, it is the food we eat and in the clothes we wear. We have a plastics pollution problem, leaching into our environment and finding its way into our marine environment, being swept up to the Arctic, ingested by marine life causing harm, polluting our waterways and reducing the aesthetic value of the places we love the most. How we manage plastics is a serious issue, but things just got a bit more complicated.
Some of us might look back on 2017 as another eventful, if somewhat discouraging year for sustainability. 2017 has seen the inauguration of Trump, which has led to the US pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, and more recently, has led to removing climate change from the list of USA national security threats. Meanwhile, closer to home, Brexit brings fears that the 1,100 EU environmental laws will become watered down in the UK among the effort to ensure Britain remains a great trading nation. Amid all this, you would be forgiven for thinking that 2017 has been a dismal year for sustainability.
When 10,000 government delegates met at COP23 to tackle climate change, the UNFCC and other sponsors brought 100 blockchain developers to Bonn with one purpose - to code for climate.
The Energy Saving Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) is the UK's response to Article 8 of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), which mandates that all large organisations must, every four years, undertake a number of steps, including calculating total energy use and performing energy audits across their estate.
The 2016 CEO Study published by Accenture and the United Nations Global Compact boldly claims that a "staggering 97% of CEO's interviewed believe that sustainability is important to the future success of their business". Despite being reminiscent of the 97% of scientists that agree on climate change, clearly, we are at a point in time where the question around business expansion is not can, but rather how, does a business grow sustainably and where should it focus its efforts?
We are living in an age of information abundance. Consumers are increasingly becoming more demanding and more dubious that brands can keep the promises they make. There is often a sizeable gap between expectation and reality in the products that people buy, and nowhere is this gap more obvious than in the "sustainable" product sector.
As the UK continues to battle its way to an 80% reduction of its carbon emissions by 2050, a sinking feeling has begun to set in for those who are aware of and involved with decarbonising the UK. Our current infrastructure and policies do not provide the right basis required to transition to a low-carbon economy at speed.
Why your supply chain should be a priority for your organisation.
