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Most of us work in an office at some point or another. They’re a big chunk of the UK’s emissions thanks to the large service sector. From accountants to estate agents to call centres, there’s a huge variety of small businesses all generating emissions.
In this article we tackle the most common areas you can make changes to reduce your office carbon footprint.
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In 2019, the UK parliament passed a law which is expected to reduce by 100% the country’s emissions by 2050, all of this based on the country’s 1990 emissions. It is likely that further regulations will require all sectors and scales of business to contribute to these targets. For this reason, it is very important that you start thinking about reducing your carbon footprint.
Eventually, you will see suppliers and B2B customers asking what your environmental policy is. You’ll need to have demonstrated reductions to retain business. Best to get ahead of the curve.
Also, reducing your carbon footprint will allow you to have less of an environmental impact. Consumers are increasingly keen to buy from those doing good. Whether you’re B2B or B2C there’s strong business case for doing so.
Recent market research that shows that at least 43% of global consumers expect businesses to be accountable for environmental impacts. Managing to minimize your carbon footprint will also allow you to save money!
In short, your “footprint” is the amount of greenhouse gas emissions you are emitting through running an office. To reach Net Zero, every business needs to reduce their impact on the environment.
Here are a few steps that get you started with reducing your carbon footprint. Ideally, you would measure at some point but to begin with there’s some easy wins you can make.
Part of the carbon footprint in your office is related to the emissions generated by your staff. Think about how many people drive to your office using their own car and whether it is powered by petrol. Reports in the UK have shown that on average, petrol-powered cars emit at least 307g CO2e per mile. We know that other more sustainable, ways of transportation have a much lower carbon footprint.
There’s a great calculator here to get some rough figures.
Ask all of your employees for their estimated travel distance. Using this calculator you can quickly produce numbers for your annual footprint, and it is likely in the Tonnes. This will take a grove of trees decades to undo.
Alternative options are, where practical, much better and come with other benefits too.
The first priority would be to see which of your employees have the ability to walk or bike to work. This option is the most important because it has added value to the reduction of transport emissions such as improved health and mood. Walking or biking has a lot of potentials to reduce your carbon footprint because at least 41% of short car trips could be made in this way. A recent research has suggested that the carbon footprint of walking or cycling could be as low as 80 g CO2/mile and 96 g CO2/mile only considering the food intake associated with the lost calories.
Based on this, if we assume that one of your employees is using their car to go to work and then he decided to walk or bike, doing simple math we could finally calculate weekly, monthly and yearly reductions.
For example using 23 miles a day as the average UK commuting distance:
For staff that have to take a longer trip to work, you can use the same approach but with public transport. We will only consider buses and trains. When using buses, travelers have a carbon footprint of 168 CO2e per mile. This footprint is 45% smaller than that generated by the use of the petrol-powered car.
On the other hand, National and Eurostar rails emit 65.55 and 9.6 g CO2e respectively, which is 78% and 97% less than conventional cars. This information, in the same way as in the previous case, allows us to see how the promotion of the use of these transports can diminish our footprint.
EVs have an average carbon footprint of 84.8g of CO2e / mile, 72% less than conventional cars.
Today this option is quite crucial, as many people refuse to use public transportation for fear of transmitting diseases such as COVID-19. Promoting and rewarding the use of these vehicles might be hard depending on the possibilities to facilitate either acquisition or charging of EVs. The good thing is that now the UK government is presenting tax exemption for EVs purchase and further providing a “Workplace Charging Scheme” to ease the change from petrol to electricity powered cars.
After reduction by transportation, we’re onto energy consumption. In offices, energy is a large part of your carbon footprint due to the energy used by lights, computers and general machinery. In larger offices especially, this leakage can add up!
The average emissions in the EU vary from 200 to 280 g CO2e per kilowatt hour (kwh).
Using this you can quickly estimate your energy footprint (scope 2) based on your energy bill data. This is data you already have which you can easily track to see reductions and savings in your office footprint.
Global lighting is responsible for 5% of CO2 emissions in the world, so it is essential to find technology that allows us to obtain the best efficiency. LED lights are the essence of energy efficiency in this matter because the quality of lighting is not diminished, yet the energy consumption drops significantly.
They illuminate more and spend 50 to 70% less of energy than conventional incandescent bulbs. Also, we can increase the energy saving by adding motion sensors in spaces such as bathrooms and warehouses.
Air conditioning and ventilation systems are responsible for 20% of the energy consumption in office buildings. Currently these are used without sustainability in mind, so restricting usage can have a big impact.
One way to reduce energy consumption is to establish a range of temperature, hours and seasons of use. Talk to your employees and be clear on why you’re making these changes, and demonstrate potential energy savings. Having your team involved will help ensure changes are made.
When purchasing new equipment for the office, make sure it all comes with energy efficiency certificates.
For example, “Energy Star,” found on products such as computers, laptops, printers, fans and even air conditioners, is a sample of certificates that indicate whether a product is energy efficient or not. Without going too far, computers with this certificate use 30 to 60% less energy than computers without it.
Let’s say that you have already implemented all the above electricity reduction options and you are asking yourself if there is anything more you can do. Good Energy claims that they can offer 100% renewable energy and GEUK that they can achieve 0.00g CO2e/kWh with their energy supply. This can be certified by the Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (REGO) scheme making it possible for businesses like yours to confirm reductions in carbon footprint.
In this section we look at other areas which may not carry a large carbon footprint but contribute none the less. You should reduce, reuse and recycle in all aspects of office life.
It’s important to follow it in that order – reducing has a much greater impact than recycling. Introducing recycling bins can be an easy win, however it’s also vital to reduce the waste created in the first place.
This proposal directly reduces the emissions generated by the transportation of staff to the office. You only need to establish one day a week of home office and you will already be reducing 20% of the emissions by transporting personnel.
Promoting this activity, especially now that most food businesses are only allowed to use deliveries, helps to prevent the unnecessary emissions caused by the use of cars and/or motorcycles for deliveries.
Promoting this activity, makes your staff avoid buying food through delivery services that use cars and motorcycles for delivery. However, if your employees have to, promote the use of local restaurants as a means of reducing your footprint. This will probably also have a positive impact on your relationship with your local community.
The “Second-hand effect report” has shown the positive impacts on the carbon footprint of buying second-hand. In 2019 alone, it was estimated that more than 25 million tons of GG were avoided by purchasing second-hand items on online marketplaces. This amount is equivalent to 50% of Norway’s annual GG emissions.
It is important to mention that small businesses can make a much bigger impact because their purchasing processes are much simpler than large corporations.
The issue of sustainability and the reduction of carbon footprint has been a topic of debate for the last twenty years. However, 2020 has brought with it an unusual situation and, although many will resist, the way we live will change.
A growing and radical trend that really helps to reduce your carbon footprint is to move to a full or partial virtual office. Nevertheless, it is true that under this scheme the domestic energy consumption increases, but even then the consumption for community has been reported to be at least 3 times higher in various countries. In addition to this, the UK government has already made public its plan for a green industrial revolution, which has as a major component the use of renewable energies for electricity supply.
To keep your momentum going:
You should now have a good idea of where to begin your journey to increased sustainability. Or perhaps you’ve already started and are about to take the next steps?
Small99 Hero is designed to help you whatever stage you’re at. With personalised actions based on your business, you’ll always know what to do next. And our progress tracker lets you check how far you’ve come, as well as share your achievements so everyone can see where you are on the path to Net Zero.
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