The digital leaders met for breakfast in London, and as usual the conversation flowed easily, as we shared insights and experiences. Unlike Scopes 1 and 2, Scope 3 is extremely broad and the general view is it’s pretty overwhelming. Where do I start? How will I fund this? Will the introduction of mandatory reporting result in punitive measures?
As we debated the role of the organisation, the leaders, the employees and the end users when it comes to delivering impactful carbon reduction plans, there were several key points that we thought were worth sharing - some of the key takeaways included:
1. Don’t have a validated carbon reduction plan? You’re not alone. Only around 20% of UK organisations do. A quick win here is reviewing existing projects through a sustainability lens. Productivity, efficiency and migration projects can all reduce carbon footprint, and if you start measuring carbon from the ground up, you’ll soon see where hotspots are for further action so will be in better shape to make a difference when reporting becomes mandatory.
2. Every job is a climate job. If you want your employees to get involved ask them to take the same approach and look at tasks and projects through the sustainability lens. For example, our service design team consider how they can use lighter weight fonts, design patterns, less multimedia files, how they can design nudges in services to support consumers/citizens in their decision making: ‘have you considered whether you need to download this file?’. When you start giving some serious thought to carbon impact, you’ll see multiple benefits include making services more efficient, more accessible and lowering costs.
3. Educate and inform. Seeding information and providing employees, stakeholders and users with insights, will usually lead to better decisions. Do your team expect a new laptop every 3 years irrespective of whether it needs replacing? Show them the carbon footprint for changing it out. Putting decision-making information in people’s hands is likely to result in behavioural change.
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