10 Steps to Make Your Business Climate Friendly & Achieve Net Zero

As companies reopen with new Covid-19 regulations, nearly all will be making some fundamental changes to how they do business given the new landscape and changing consumer sentiment. Things are going to be quite different. Further, all businesses have a requirement to achieve Net Zero – i.e. your overall business activities need to be carbon neutral.

Employees and customers not only require higher standards of public hygiene but they will also be turning to businesses that are environmentally conscious. Being an environmentally responsible business, with environmentally sound practices, products and services will become the new norm. Try and get ahead of it.

We have created a simple action plan to help businesses adopt some simple steps to getting climate ready and to achieve NetZero.

Here are our 10 Steps to Make Your Business Climate Friendly:

1. Switch to renewable energy in your office, factories, vehicle fleets and tools. There are a growing number of green energy suppliers so finding the right one for your needs is quite easy. Also, electric vehicles and tools are becoming much more pervasive.
2. Hire on-site employees who live within a cycle commute – the rest could work from home. Help keep pollution down and fully embrace the new ways of working. Now that you have had a few months to put in place successful home working routines and processes during the Coronavirus lockdown it’s time to lock those benefits in.
3. Minimise waste and recycle everything you can. The Zero Waste movement is starting to pick up some steam – try and adopt what is practical in an office setting. Become a single use plastics free business.
4. Lease an eco-office, warehouse or factory with a zero carbon footprint. At a minimum make sure your office is as well insulated as possible for the winter and allows as much sunlight, for natural warming, during the late spring and summer. That way you will use less energy heating your offices.
5. Train employees in DSP’s 10 steps to Help Solve the Climate Change Crisis.
6. Rewild your green areas. Plant trees, shrubs and wild grasses – the combination of the three provides the basic habitats for wildlife and insects. Place benches in nature to support employee wellbeing.
7. Train your company leaders in the methods and approaches to developing environmentally conscious behaviours, practises and products. 
8. Source eco materials and local supplies wherever possible from environmentally conscious suppliers. 
9. Organise team meetings and away days at eco-friendly hotels and venues. Try to set up outdoor meeting spaces and actively support outdoor meetings when employees, suppliers or customers are at your offices.
10. Measure the improvements and accomplishments you are achieving on the road to becoming fully climate friendly on a 6 monthly basis and communicate your progress to employees and customers.

Building an environmentally conscious organisation is an exciting process and one which will prove highly satisfying for you and your organisation. Done right, it will also add considerable value to your products or services as well as your brand. Include all your stakeholders in the journey – it could prove quite empowering and motivational.

At DSP we help organisations and individuals to become more climate friendly and adopt healthier living approaches. We offer a cost effective online app, DSP Online, to help you better understand how to become environmentally conscious with simple actionable techniques gleaned from the day to day approaches and learnings at DSP’s center of excellence in the UK southwest. Sign up to DSP Online today – CLICK HERE.

An Exit Strategy for the Climate Change Crisis

Seeing as no one in their right mind would wish for another government lockdown this is probably the right time to produce an exit strategy for the climate change crisis so that we can solve this more deadly event ahead of time and before the next, possibly permanent lockdown. Also, today is world Earth Day.

The good news is that if enough of us follow this simple 10 step exit strategy WE CAN reverse global warming while improving our lives, our health and wellbeing, our wildlife and this planet – but most importantly we, the human race, will also get to survive.

I have tried to keep this 10 step exit strategy as simple and achievable as possible. Each step is backed by science and each one has been selected to make the biggest difference possible to reducing global warming. None of these steps is hard for any of us to do. Over the coming weeks and months I will be writing more in depth about each of the 10 steps so that we can better understand why they are so critical and how, specifically, we can make them happen. I will also try to highlight some of the companies and government organisations that are leading the way on climate change solutions.

Myself, my family and my businesses have adopted each of the 10 steps and they work. We have also created a centre of excellence for the 10 steps just outside Exeter in the UK’s southwest. Visit us at Devon Sculpture Park when lockdown is over or join us today at DSP Online.

So here’s the ’10 Step Exit Strategy for Solving the Climate Change Crisis’:

1. Eliminate waste – eliminate all unnecessary waste with the ultimate goal being zero waste. It includes food waste, plastics and energy waste. This means shopping more diligently and frugally, eating everything you buy and getting better at freezing, composting wasted food, recycling metals, clothing and other materials and doing everything you can to remove household energy waste including heavier curtains over windows, all LED lighting and improved insulation.

2. Shift to a plant based diet – move to a plant based diet and at a minimum try to become a flexitarian eating meat just once or twice a week. Make your own kitchen garden so that you can eat your home produced fruit, vegetables and herbs. It’s more fun, convenient and reduces your travel emission footprint. Buy locally sourced food and pasture fed livestock.

3. Use renewable energy – switch to renewable energy sources including electric, solar, wind and possibly biomass boilers. In the short term maximise electric heating, water and cookers plus outdoor solar lights then start looking into solar panels or roof tiles and mini-wind turbines for your garden.

4. Shop differently – how we shop and what we shop for dictates how products and services are designed. By shopping differently we dictate whether manufacturers and service providers adapt their offerings to become more environmentally friendly. So insist on eco-friendly products and services whether it’s eco-friendly clothes, shoes, food (whether in shops or restaurants), contractors and repair services. There are already plenty of them. For example insist on a gardening service that uses rewilding gardening techniques and electric gardening tools.

5. Rewilding your garden – rewild your garden, terrace, courtyard, verges and more. Lobby your school, neighbours, churchyard, office green spaces, commons and local parks to rewild their green spaces. Learn about wildlife gardening techniques.

6. Change your approach to travel and transport – try and travel less after lockdown. Do you really need to shop for food more than once a week in the car. Try to walk or cycle to the local shops, to work or school. Home work as much as you can while insisting on virtual meetings wherever possible. When you change your car buy an electric vehicle or an electric hybrid at a minimum. Try to reduce flying for leisure to just one flight a year and holiday locally and whenever possible at eco-resorts.

7. Elect environmentally responsible politicians – choose politicians and leaders in general that make solving the climate crisis their number one priority. There is no longer any excuse for any government, business or farm not having a clear, deliverable net zero carbon plan to be achieved by 2030. Hitting zero carbon by 2040 could be too late.

8. Be more frugal and balanced in your life – consume less, exercise more, spend time in nature, read more, spend more quality time with family, friends and in your local community. Make things that are eco-friendly whether it’s DIY, hobbies, projects, community initiatives or the arts.

9. Work for environmentally friendly companies – you get to choose who you work for so choose companies that have clear, short term net zero carbon plans and let you work from home unless you’re in walking or cycling distance of the office. Push them to provide more environmentally friendly products and services, workplaces, warehousing and logistics. Get them to rewild any of their green spaces.

10. Stay healthy and adapt your lifestyle – with Coronavirus lockdown we have a unique opportunity to change the way we live and work. We are already forced to do many of the things required to reduce global warming and to solve the climate crisis. We have seen a massive reduction in global emissions. So just keep doing much of what you’re doing but in a more sustainable way. And if you go beyond this and become a more rounded pro-environment citizen you will not only do your bit to save the planet but you will also develop skills and experiences that could qualify you for the next massive global industry – the climate solution industry.