Net Zero refers to efforts pertaining to reducing absolute emissions across an organisation’s entire supply chain, to support the target to limit global temperature increases to 1.5C, as agreed in the 2015 Paris climate summit. More generally, the term describes all environmental management. 

Last month, we undertook a carbon footprint analysis with an advisor from Net Zero Bucks, an initiative from Buckingham Business First, which has a successful history of delivering projects with environmental sustainability at their heart, enabling businesses to save over 65,000 tonnes of CO₂e (carbon dioxide equivalent) to date.

The output from this endeavour included a Net Zero Report in addition to a Net Zero Action Plan, which contains a summary of the key issues facing our business relevant to achieving Net Zero.

In the latter, we were encouraged to learn that we have no Scope 1 or 2 emissions to reduce. However, given that one of us is based in Spain and reliant on air travel, we do face a challenge in reducing emissions coming from that way of getting to the UK for in-person meetings or events a couple of times a year.

In the report itself, our annual carbon footprint and suggested actions to take to help move our business to net zero were detailed. It was interesting to read, for instance, that our modest annual food and drink consumption made up the largest individual source of emissions, accounting for over a third of our overall total.

We’re still absorbing how we can implement suggested actions from the report wherever we can, of course, but already it’s clear there are some ‘quick wins’ (that weren’t immediately obvious to us previously) that will help us on our ongoing decarbonisation journey.