Comment by George Drennan-Lang, Development Director at Changeworks
The latest quarterly meeting of the Edinburgh Climate Compact took place this week, which also happens to be Scotland’s Climate Week.
Changeworks is a proud member of the compact, which is a cross-sector network of organisations in the Scottish capital committed to being leaders in the race to net-zero and who are dedicated to moving forward, faster, together.
The compact is made up of a growing number of member organisations including Edinburgh Airport, City of Edinburgh Council and Edinburgh International Festival, who commit to 16 pledges to “take action” in tackling the climate emergency.
This week’s meeting was to consider the impact of the compact and where it could go next. The level of engagement and positivity from all members is inspiring and exciting to see, especially as tackling the climate emergency can sometimes feel like an uphill struggle.
Here at Changeworks we have taken a range of actions over the years to reduce our own emissions. Activities we have recently launched include:
- A new eLearning course on the climate emergency for colleagues as part of their induction.
- Moving office which gave us the opportunity to switch to electric heating and cooling powered by renewable energy, on top of providing brilliant facilities for active travel to work.
- Adopting a sustainable procurement policy to make sure the items we buy consider their sustainability
- Developing a check list for staff organising events to adopt best practice in making sure events are sustainable.
- Refreshing our travel hierarchy to help direct staff choices in reducing the impact of travel.
- Briefing all staff on the impact our emissions reductions.
As a growing organisation this means our positive impact increases, but at the same times o do our emissions. Emissions relating to staff working at home and commuting to work will remain an area we will need to work on over the coming years.
This year we are encouraging staff to:
- Engage with our internal carbon reduction team.
- Provide support to staff such as the bike to work scheme or electric vehicle salary sacrifice.
- Ask colleagues to consider switching their home supplier to 100% renewable energy
We look forward to continuing to engage with the Edinburgh Climate Compact to show leadership in delivering progress to a net zero Edinburgh.