Carbon Neutral – Together We Can Do This!
Content Capture Services is on a journey to reduce its carbon emissions and minimise its impact on climate change. The size of our business means that we are not mandated to report emissions but morally, surely, we all have a responsibility to target this area. The team at Content Capture have always been proactive and rather than waiting for a top-down governmental solution we feel its important to do our bit, hopefully with all the other SME’s, to work this from the green shoots up!
In 2020 we started work on our sustainability strategy. Our main driver continues to be our effect on climate change but let’s be honest, done well, it could also reduce costs and cement customer relationships especially with larger Organisations that are targeting carbon neutrality gains within the supply chain.
The first port of call on our journey was to understand more about our Company’s carbon footprint. We used several of the Carbon Calculators available on the market to form an average.
We set an emissions baseline to provide a point against which we measure any changes in the amount of emissions produced by a project in a reporting period. Milestones as small as installing energy-saving LED light bulbs (completed March 2021) through to switching our cars from diesel to electric are marked against this.
We found that most of our emissions came from electricity use, so we’ve looked at ways of reducing power usage. For example, power settings on PC’s, automatic on and off options for monitors and other equipment.
We have also considered carbon offset credits that invest in environmentally friendly projects elsewhere in the world through areas such as reforestation and the generation of renewable energy. It may be some time before our offices can be powered by renewable energy for example so in the meantime perhaps we can offset.
Key to our journey is to do this as a team, informing and educating everyone about the Company’s ambitions. Areas like walk, or cycle to work and car-sharing schemes are to be encouraged. We have a local recruitment strategy in place to facilitate this. If people only must travel a few miles to the office, we have much more opportunity to hang up the car keys. Home working where possible also feeds into this.
We only have a small supply chain, but we are conscious of making informed environmental decisions in these areas and committed to really prioritising the carbon neutrality alongside more traditional decision-making criteria.
We have looked at each of our services with a view to focusing on immediate gains. For example, in the document scanning department we have prioritised the efficiency of the recycled product when the client paperwork is confidentially destroyed. This vital recycling is a real gain that we can put on the board and have been doing for many years. 100’s are trees are saved every year by our work in this area. We have also looked at how we move client paperwork from their office to ours. We minimise trips, combine where possible and really work to making this as efficient as possible.
We have also considered within the office how we recycle everything that we use. We also encourage the team to consider this angle. For example, the use of a drink bottle that can be refilled as opposed to convenience cans and plastic bottles.
Many small businesses have already started their net zero journey and can offer valuable advice, so we also have a plan in place to learn from others both in our industry sector and in the wider economy.
We are passionate about this area. If you are a supplier or customer and can highlight an area, we can improve on please do let us know. Together we can do this!