Steps your charity can take to protect the planet

In your personal life you may be actively taking steps to help in the fight against climate change, but are you doing enough in your professional life?

 

If you’re a CEO, trustee or senior leader, are you committed to ensuring that your charity and staff are empowered, encouraged and inspired to make changes that will help our planet?

 

Here are seven simple steps you can take to play your part in fighting climate change.

 

 

Be informed

 

Climate change is complex and can feel overwhelming. One of the best things you can do in the fight against climate change is to learn more about it. If you wish to inspire change within your organisation, you need to be informed. Gareth Redmond-King, Head of Climate Change at WWF UK, has written a helpful article to answer the most common climate change questions.

 

ACEVO, the membership body for charity CEOs, has dedicated blog posts from members about how they are addressing climate change within their organisations. There are lots of useful posts, particularly for those starting on a sustainability journey.

 

 

Have a climate-friendly travel policy

 

Did you know that transport is one of the most polluting sectors in the UK? There are lots of ways to incentivise staff to take up eco-friendly ways to travel, such as offering season ticket loans or bicycle loans.

 

Sasha Taylor, CEO of The Bike Station, recommends looking at your expenses policy and ensuring that you are recompensing cycling at the same rate as car use.

 

Ask staff to consider if they really need to travel for business and to look at more eco-friendly alternatives, such as having an online meeting or travelling by train or coach.

 

Extend your climate-friendly travel policy to include personal travel. Climate Perks found that 50% of people are ready to reduce the amount that they fly but only 3% do so because time is a factor. It’s much quicker to fly than to take a coach, for example.

 

They are calling for employers to give staff paid ‘journey days’ to encourage them to take alternate routes to their destinations. This also helps reduce carbon footprint. For charity leaders who want their organisations to really live their values, then this is a great initiative.

 

 

Choose your suppliers wisely

 

If you’re committing your organisation to be more sustainable, it follows that the suppliers you work with should be committed too. Look into adding sustainability factors or considerations into your procurement processes.

 

As charities, cost is always a factor but this should not be at the detriment of working with a supplier who is going against your own climate commitments.

 

 

Reduce, reuse, recycle

 

Every product we use has an environmental impact. So recycling what we can, reducing what we use and reusing or upcycling items can have a big impact on items not ending up in landfill. Encourage recycling in your organisation by ensuring there are recycling bins around the office, clearly marked for paper, plastic and glass.

 

Ask staff to use glasses for water or a reusable water bottle to reduce single use plastic. Remind staff to consider the environment before pressing ‘print’ and consider donating office furniture, or items such as charity fundraising tins, you no longer need to other organisations.

 

 

Go green

 

There are lots of ways to make your office more environmentally friendly. Choose an energy provider that uses renewable energy, for example.

 

Switch off lights at night and ask staff to unplug their computers and any other appliances, such as kettles, microwaves and printers.

 

According to The Energy Trust, appliances on standby mode are said to be responsible for 1% of global carbon emissions so unplug appliances rather than leaving them on standby.

 

 

Reduce your digital footprint

 

We’ve all heard about the impact of our carbon footprint but did you know that your digital footprint is also harming the environment? Just how environmentally friendly is your website or your digital products? Find out by using the Website Carbon Calculator.

 

As the internet is one of the biggest polluters, sign up to the Sustainable Web Manifesto to put their principles into action.

 

 

Embed sustainability into your organisation

 

If you’re serious about ensuring your organisation is committed to climate and the environment, then develop a sustainability policy and upload it to your website so that it is a public commitment. For inspiration, and what to include, take a look at City to Sea’s sustainability policies.