Net Zero Action, Net Zero Effect
I have been deeply worried about climate change for years, so why has it taken me until now to get into action? In this blog I look at what has stopped me, what might be stopping other small business owners and what changed.
The weather this month has been glorious, the sun shining for weeks on end, but if you are anything like me, it is hard to enjoy it fully. In the background lurks the memory of the 40°C temperatures last year, and the fear of what the globe will look like when my children are my age.
I’ve been adamant that government and corporations should take more action faster, but done precious little myself bar cycling to work. So why? What are the concerns and fears that stop us? Here were mine:
I don’t know where to start
A lot of what stops us, I assert is that we don’t know where to start. If you get as far as pausing to think about how you can make an impact, you are immediately beset with the complexity of the problem.
At it’s most basic level most of us have no ideaI how to measure our carbon footprint, or how to reduce it effectively once we do.
We’re small business owners, we have enough on our plate without taking a climate science degree and we don’t have the money to employ a consultant.
Then I went to Accountex, the accountants’ trade show at ExCeL, and came across a stand offering up a Xero add-on called Ecologi with a clever idea. The idea was that if you gave them access to the data on your Xero account they could make an estimate of the business’s carbon footprint. If you answered some questions as well, it could be pretty accurate.
What is clever about it is that it aggregates a lot of learning and applies it to a lot of people. If I know the carbon footprint wrapped up in a Squarespace subscription, I can feed that information into everyone with a Squarespace subscription.
The other clever part is that it was free to get the carbon footprint estimate. There was very little reason not to take this first step, which we duly did. It told us that since Jan 2022 we are responsible for 37.7 tonnes of CO2.
I don’t know what to do about it
So far so good, but then we need to do something about our carbon footprint. I can hardly stop using Squarespace, or Xero, or get rid of the office, or not have a computer. Most likely any of the alternatives would have a bigger carbon footprint, so what am I supposed to do?
The platform actually offered a very simple action to take, I could buy a carbon offset, but I’d heard bad stories about carbon offset, that they were useless or worse harmful.
At this point I asked around and heard a lot of the same message, carbon offset is not the answer. As a result the journey almost ended here because although the same people also said that we need to do something, I was again left wondering how to take action.
However the thought I kept coming back to was: ‘If I do nothing, that will be the worst outcome of all’. Net Zero Action, Net Zero Result.
So I kept talking to people, I got contacts and some friendly consultants were generous with their time. Then I arranged a call with Ecologi themselves and a very friendly account manager called Josh answered a lot of my concerns.
First off he agreed that carbon offset was the last action we should be taking, the first being reducing consumption. He reassured me that the site is still in Beta and that soon action plans will be joining carbon offsets.
He proposed an annual rhythm of:
Assess (ie assess carbon footprint)
Set Goals (in reduction)
Action the plan
Offset whatever is residual
Evaluate
Report and celebrate (ie report and celebrate progress)
He also pointed out the independent accreditations that their carbon offsets have and something that I hadn’t noticed at first which many of the consultants warned against, namely that although the site offers up tree planting they are not offering it as a carbon offset (because planting a tree takes too long to have the required result), rather they are there as a sort of bonus action.
My own view is that most likely there is more to learn about carbon offset, but only by investing in it and engaging in it can we hope to improve the science behind it and its efficacy. Remember the alternative may be ‘do nothing’.
We can’t make a difference
I think this stops us a lot. We feel the big differences are made by governments and large corporations, our own efforts are too small to have an impact.
We should resist that creeping resignation. Roughly half the UK economy consists of small business. If we all ignore this issue, that is a massive dent in the UK effort.
Without wishing to proselytise for Ecologi too much, here they also have some clever ideas. There is a lobbying part of what they plan: https://ecologi.com/collective-action. If enough users clamour for Squarespace to reduce their carbon footprint, that can create a lot of pressure. Plus they have a page to show our combined efforts.
we’ll just show ourselves up
I want to make a difference, we want to encourage others to make a difference, but in the background there is a fear about how our efforts will be viewed. We certainly don’t want to be accused of greenwashing, we are aware our efforts have been puny so it feels wrong to ask for a pat on the back.
In my opinion though, we need to see this another way. We are all on a journey with this issue. Any effort to move in the right direction needs to be celebrated and encouraged. Shame and guilt about what we are not doing will get us nowhere and will put a lot of people off from getting involved.
So we need to get over that fear and tell people that we are not perfect but we are doing things and working on it and that is to be celebrated.
It’s too late
My last question to Josh was about whether we are too late to make a difference, whether we are past the point of no return.
This was his answer:
‘Absolutely not, things can look bad, and even if we exceed the 1.5 threshold, the next battle is 1.6 then 1.7 etc until we can start bringing it down.
For example UK Emissions are dropping at one of the fastest rates in the world
https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom
It can be done!’
Conclusion
So we are on our way. We have scheduled a time to have a discussion as a team about our action plan. We have made our first carbon offset purchases.
You can follow our progress here: https://ecologi.com/co-accountingsouthlo.
We are looking forward to Ecologi releasing its action plan badges.
If you like the look of Ecologi as a way forward you can join in using this link: https://ecologi.com/business/zero?referrer=coaccounting.
That said there are other platforms eg: https://small99.co.uk/
Acknowledgements
With thanks to:
Adam Bastock: https://small99.co.uk/
Chris Wolf: https://wolfandplayer.com/
Geoff Kendall: https://transitionagency.com/
Joshua Randall: https://ecologi.com/
