Environmental sustainability: Our story so far

In 2023 we launched our Climate Action Hub to reckon with the role of charities when it comes to climate change and to get the sector talking.

 

Over the course of our first year of focusing on climate action, we gained expertise by speaking to a range of charities like the Wildlife Trusts, WWF UK, RSPB, British Youth Council, and City Bridge Foundation. This built on our knowledge of climate change and sustainability as it applies to the charity sector and enabled us to share the range of ways to make a difference with our audience.

 

At the same time, we reflected on our own approach to sustainability and how our operations should adapt to the changing climate. In this article, we tell our story so far to being a more environmentally sustainable charity.

 

 

Conducting research

 

We started by conducting research about how we could become more sustainable. This involved understanding actions similar organisations had already taken, as well as conducting an internal survey to find out how our team leaders thought it could work for our specific charity.

 

This initial research was helpful to find out the most effective way to proceed, being a charity with a small number of employees (ranging between 15 and 25 during this period) and no prior technical sustainability experience.

 

The research identified key priorities and investigated a range of opportunities in seven key areas: leadership, finance, office, technology, partnerships and suppliers, events, and culture.

 

During 2023, we also conducted large-scale research which culminated in the report ‘Climate change in the UK charity sector’. Our finding that 88% of charities were concerned about climate change but many were yet to take action made it even more important for us to continue championing the cause – to help both ourselves and others respond appropriately to the changing climate.

 

 

Launching the Environmental Committee

 

The decision to launch an Environmental Committee came from a suggestion in our internal research survey and was backed up by the fact that this approach had been used elsewhere in the charity sector, with Marie Curie forming an Environment and Sustainability Steering Group to decarbonise all areas of the organisation.

 

The committee launched with four members from different areas of the charity, meeting once a month. Working with limited time and resources, the committee quickly learned to focus on areas of big impact. It noticed, for example, that as a team who primarily works from home using digital tools, going paperless in the office was less important than reducing our digital carbon footprint.

 

Another learning was around the best routes of communication with the wider team. What works best is a combination of a few types of communication:

• In-person presentations
• Teams channel announcements
• Regular updates at online team meetings

We found that communicating the reason behind our actions is as important as the action itself. Taking a chance to open an in-person discussion also helped the committee hear from the wider team about their thoughts and ideas on sustainability.

 

 

Writing an Environmental Policy

 

We decided to write an environmental policy to create transparency for internal and external stakeholders surrounding sustainability efforts, as well as make sure internal work towards environmental sustainability is co-ordinated and organised.

 

To inform our policy, we referred to those published by other charities and consulted with team leaders at Charity Digital.

 

 

Reducing our digital carbon footprint

 

Our operations are primarily digital, so reducing our digital carbon footprint was a priority. The Environmental Committee started by calculating the charity’s digital carbon footprint using Small99’s Digital Emissions Calculator. This gave us a benchmark to look at the biggest areas of emissions and to measure our future activities against.

 

 

Emails

 

Next, the committee tackled emails. Research has found that that if everyone deleted 50 old emails, it would be the equivalent of turning off 2.7 billion light bulbs for one hour. So we invited everyone in the team to a quarterly “Email clean-up” as an opportunity to get rid of unnecessary emails in their individual inboxes.

 

We also shared an optional line for the team to add to their email signatures: “Please note I may not reply unless you specifically request an acknowledgement or response. Globally, emails could account for as much as 150 million tonnes of CO2 annually.”

 

Meanwhile, Charity Digital’s marketing team reduced the size of our email recipient lists where possible to reduce the number of emails we send.

 

 

Storage

 

The Cloud is run by data centres: buildings with large groups of computer servers which overwhelmingly rely on air conditioning and chilled water to keep functioning. This means the Cloud now has a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry. A single data centre can consume as much electricity as 50,000 homes.

 

To begin to reduce our digital storage, the Charity Digital team started by deleting old and unused content from our content management system to reduce our website’s size.

 

In November 2024, the Environmental Committee launched a ‘Digital Clean-Up’ competition, lasting two weeks, to encourage everyone in the charity to delete old, duplicated, and unused files stored on the cloud.

 

 

Saving energy and reducing waste

 

Charity Digital uses serviced offices through Resource for London, who are already committed to, wherever possible, using fully renewable energy within the building, reducing the amount of waste from its building that goes to landfill, and reducing water consumption.

 

Therefore, the Environmental Committee decided to focus its efforts on individual actions to save energy and reduce office waste as a team.

 

First, we created a simple poster for our office reminding the team to switch off the office lights and monitors, as well as how to manage the heating during the day.

 

We asked the team to switch off printers when not in use and introduced a scrap paper box to the office, to give everyone the option to re-use partially used paper before it is recycled.

 

We researched how to make our future events more sustainable. This included:

• Exploring carbon offsetting for each event
• Exploring food options for each event, such as reducing the amount of plastic used with recyclable bento boxes
• Using feedback forms to calculate how attendee travel contributes to events’ carbon footprint
• Ensuring proper recycling in workshop spaces

 

 

What’s next?

 

Looking forwards, the Environmental Committee will support teams in the charity to follow the new Environmental Policy. It will also look into options to help with measuring sustainability progress across our operations, such as benchmarking and certification schemes.   

 

We’re delighted to have recently joined Islington Sustainability Network, a cross-sector group that pools resources, ideas, and energy to respond to the climate emergency and support the borough’s transition to Zero Carbon. We look forward to all of the learning and collaboration that is to come.