As a website dedicated to helping other small businesses, it is probably worth us explaining what we’re doing to reduce our carbon footprint too!
Our footprint is currently around 2 and 3 Tonnes per year. The majority of this is in train travel to events and working from home emissions (gas heating, mostly).
We have partnered with Krystal web hosting to make sure all of our resources and assets can be used totally carbon free. They use 100% renewable energy and partner with some fantastic initiatives such as Ecologi and Trees for Life.
There will still be factors we can’t fully control. From video calls to meetings and travel, we are not perfect.
We offset around 1 tonne of CO2 a month with Carbon Club, the UK based tree planting organisation, as well as Ecologi.
This is mostly for peace of mind, and might even mean we’re carbon-positive.
We’re also part of Stripe Climate, meaning every payment a % goes to restoration activity.
As the UK’s leading Small Business Net Zero resource, we’re always working to help your business become more sustainable.
In terms of our own footprint, there’s really not much else where we have an impact due to our small size.
We’re planning on increasing our support for local initiatives in the future through programs like Trees for Cities and transport pressure groups to reduce the reliance on cars in our urban landscapes. Again, funding is hampering these efforts.
Sadly there are some elements outside of our control.
Emissions we’re stuck with:
Drip – We use them for email marketing, however they completely lack an environmental policy. We’re planning on pressuring them on this soon, but for now they’re the best platform for us and the other email providers in our budget are just as bad.
Asana – Similar to above, they don’t have a fantastic environmental policy but the tool is the affordable and perfect for what we need.
YouTube – We’re starting to host more of our videos on YouTube which will have a heavier carbon footprint than our hosting. However, Google’s investing heavily in renewables so this should reduce over time. Hopefully the impact our videos have will help offset their emissions too!
There are several goals that Small99 is aligned to, through direct work with small businesses and the knock on impacts this has.
B-Corps are generating a lot of buzz right now, and for good reason. They’re a fantastic organisation that makes a real difference to how companies are run.
However, we’re just not big enough.
B-Corp certification is a complex and detailed process with a lot of factors taken into consideration. Many of these simply do not apply to us. Currently there is me, Adam, running the site with content written by a freelance team.
As such, there is not much to be said for our stakeholder engagement or supply chain management.
We love B-Corp but for many small business owners it is simply not applicable to them because they are so small, which is why this website exists.
It’s imperative that we appreciate the impact the climate crisis will have on business.
Adapting to a zero carbon economy provides huge opportunities for small businesses to not only adapt to an environmentally beneficial way of doing business, but also grow profitably as a result. The transition requires action, but with this challenge comes opportunity.
This is why Small99 has the mission to bring 1 million small businesses to Net Zero by 2025, across all 3 scopes. Commitments to 2040 and 2050 simply aren’t good enough. 2030 isn’t ambitious enough. Most small businesses have simple actions they can take to reduce their impact, and can do so much quicker than the larger companies who have long term commitments.
Without bold and decisive action, we still risk achieving dangerous levels of warming that will harm our planet, and our businesses as a result.
We have a finite amount of emissions left before we exceed 1.5 or even 2 degrees of warming. Business is a key part of the system that generates these emissions, and we need to change the way we do business to become a force for good rather than the historical damage we have seen.
That is why we believe 2025 is not only ambitious but also a practical target for a large chunk of our economy.
We inspire and empower businesses to make change quickly. We’re developing training courses, easy to use tools and provide guidance that anyone can follow.
Small99 declares business energy and is excited to join the Business Declares Movement.
Answer a few questions and get an estimated carbon footprint of your business in 2 minutes.
Join our Hero platform to get a free and simple Carbon Reduction Plan for your small business so you can start acting in less than 10 minutes.
