Services
At Carbon Smart we repeatedly see that sustainability gives companies a competitive advantage. We know that sustainability means better business – it helps companies to boost their profits, reduce their costs and improve their reputation.
There are five aspects of sustainable, low carbon business operations, as illustrated below. We offer comprehensive business support in each of these areas for any type of business, from two-person SMEs to global corporations. Gain a competitive edge by embedding sustainability into the way you run your business.
Sustainable business operations
Carbon Smart offers a full spectrum of sustainability services.
The starting point to making your business sustainable is calculating your carbon footprint. Once you have the information about where energy and other resources are being used you can start to manage them effectively. Carbon Smart can guide you through every aspect of carbon management in a clear, practical way. We also offer ongoing support to help you meet changing market and legislative requirements. The majority of our clients find that improving their energy and resource efficiency results in significant cost savings.
Read about our work with Rathbones or Threadneedle to learn more about our carbon management and reporting services.
One of the key elements to achieving sustainable business operations is effective management of your waste. Carbon Smart is part of the BPR Group which has been managing waste sustainably for over three decades. Our consultants have all the expertise you need to make your waste management environmentally sound. To find out more about how we can help you reduce waste, save money, and even achieve zero to landfill, click here.
Carbon Smart has the tools, knowledge and experience to help you get energy management to work within your organisation. We have worked with several large, multi-site organisations to successfully design and implement management systems that comply with relevant international standards such as ISO14001 and ISO 50001. To find out more about how we can help you, click here.
Client communication and promotion
You might make the decision to improve your sustainability credentials in response to environmentally conscious customer demand, which is increasingly shaping the market. Alternatively you might want to manage your carbon emissions to save money or for ethical reasons. Whatever the motivation, you will almost certainly find that communicating your environmental efforts brings benefits – these can include winning new clients, retaining existing clients and qualifying for tenders.
Communicating your environmental credentials credibly and effectively is crucial – ‘green-wash’ can cause considerable damage to your brand. Certifying your company as Carbon Smart is a solid way to demonstrate your sustainability credentials. Our marketing and communication experts will help you ensure that you capitalise fully on the many ways you can promote the environmental efforts you’ve made.
Carbon Smart is currently launching a new product rating service, Carbon Smart Rated – the service provides consumers with relevant and reliable information on the sustainability credentials of particular products. This offers yet another way for businesses to communicate their eco-credentials to customers.
For an example of effective client communication and promotion read about our work with OFDA, with whom we have won both national and international awards for the So-Go-Eco programme. Another successful client communication programme is described in the BPIF case study.
Staff engagement and training
The success of any sustainability initiative is dependent on staff uptake. Employees are the public face of your company so their perspective on your eco-credentials will be what is portrayed to customers.
As anyone who has tried to implement staff behaviour change will attest, this is not necessarily a straightforward task. Simply informing staff about your company’s sustainability goals and asking them to change their behaviour accordingly is often not sufficient on its own. If you can get this right your sustainability initiative is likely to achieve success. Having a successful, engaging sustainability strategy in place can help staff feel motivated and improve retention levels – it can also make your company a more appealing place to work.
We have strategies and products to support you in developing your own staff engagement programme so if you would like assistance to find the staff engagement solutions that would be most effective for your company please get in touch with our staff engagement advisors.
Our work with the Commonwealth Secretariat included progressive effective staff engagement programmes.
Sustainable procurement
Carbon emissions from the supply chain often comprise the vast majority of a company’s carbon footprint. They can also be the element most complicated to understand and address. An effective sustainable procurement system can nonetheless deliver tremendous carbon savings and effect much greater change than that achieved by addressing your operational carbon footprint alone.
Carbon Smart can help you embed sustainable procurement into your existing procurement system, which will allow your company to:
• find alternatives to purchasing wherever possible by considering reducing, reusing and recycling
• reduce the environmental, social and economic impacts of your purchases
• ensure suppliers operate in an ethical and environmentally sound manner.
Our new product rating service, Carbon Smart Rated, offers accurate information on the sustainability credentials of particular products. Choosing products within the range is as simple as A, B, C – blue rated products meet a minimum standard of sustainability, silver product criteria are more stringent, and gold products have to meet exceptional standards.
For more information on the procurement assistance we can offer look at our RBS or Commonwealth Secretariat Procurement case studies.
External reporting and compliance
External reporting is a key part of communicating sustainable activity credibly. For larger organisations legislation requires compliance to certain sustainability standards, and an obligation to report accurately on this. Reporting requirements are likely to be increased with mandatory carbon reporting in 2012. Carbon Smart can help you prepare your internal sustainability reporting to ensure compliance with the relevant standards, be they legal or best practice. Read about our reporting work with Rathbones who have been shortlisted for the Icsa Hermes Transparency and Governance Award in both 2009 and 2010.
Carbon Smart is the first and only organisation in the world to publish research benchmarking sustainability reporting assurance. We produce an annual report on the quality of third party assurance on the sustainability credentials of companies in the FTSE 350, which is sponsored by Defra and receives high profile media coverage. As experts in this field Carbon Smart can also help prepare you for third party assurance on your sustainability reporting.