Since starting to monitor Advance’s carbon using after coming out of lockdown we, as a team, have been trying to find a way to reduce our footprint. We knew we wanted to make a change and aim for net zero (or even be climate positive!), but we also believe there is more to sustainability than just carbon.

As a service-based company it’s hard to pinpoint what we can do to reduce our carbon emissions, and actually understand that we can add value to the sustainability discussion in other ways too! We can’t directly reduce the amount of concrete used on a infrastructure project and we can’t directly change the delivery packaging on what we make to make it more sustainable. However, we have done what we can. We did make the change of cutting down on paper usage in the office, we went cloud based with our filing and we decided to dispose of our large photocopier (it was recycled by a company that exports them to developing countries!) this really helped us reduce our usage and personally I find it hard to think why we had it in the first place!

After discussing our year-to-date carbon figures at a recent team meeting , I decided that we needed to take action, we had enough data to understand our typical monthly carbon footprint, and it felt the right time to start to offset it, So, on the 31^st January we made the decision to sign up to Ecologi. We chose ecologi because in talking to them we got a real sense of their passion, authenticity and desire to collaborate to change our situation, all things that resonate with us at Advance.

Ecologi is a platform for real climate action. They facilitate the funding of carbon offset projects across all 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals around the world, and as a Gold Standard carbon off setter we knew they would be the right choice. Ecologi don’t talk about net zero, instead they talk about climate positive, and so will we.

This is just the start. Now we have our platform on ecologi established, I am so excited that I can announce our next big step! Advance is going for B Corp Certification. I’ll be leading us on that journey over the next 12-18 months. It’s pretty daunting, but I’m excited to see where we go with it. I hope to share our journey, our learning (pitfalls and opportunities) along the way as our friends at PTHR have done with us.