Measure your carbon footprint
Measuring your carbon allows your business to track and reduce operational costs, uncover compliance risks, and meet growing customer and investor expectations.
This is all about keeping track of data, but it doesn’t have to be hard. Some climate accounting tools can get info straight from your current accounting software to help automate the process, or you can collect receipts for fuel, electricity, freight and travel, then add the details into carbon calculator software.
Calculate the emissions released by your business over a year to use as your baseline for setting targets. Find your biggest sources of emissions and set realistic short-term and long-term goals.
Include energy and emissions in your strategy
Using less energy is not only about emissions. It is also about resilience, rising costs, insurance, regulation, supply chains and future investment decisions.
Use your carbon footprint and operational understanding to identify direct and indirect risks.
Turn team ideas into savings
Your team can help find simple ways to cut waste, lower emissions and reduce costs. When people understand why change matters, they’re more likely to support it. Consult your team and involve them in the process:
- Ask for ideas. Staff often see where energy, fuel, materials or resources are being wasted. Ask what matters most to them. Look for quick wins before finding bigger savings.
- Explain the reason for change. Be clear about what’s changing, why it helps, and how it can save money. Use reminders, visuals or friendly challenges to make new habits easy.
- Start small and build on what works. Trial ideas and support people through any changes. Work with staff passionate about sustainability to spread the word and maintain momentum.
Communicate and market your success
Communicating your climate journey can build trust, loyalty and credibility with your customers and strengthen your value proposition. Tell your sustainability story simply and honestly, avoid greenwashing, and measure progress over time.
Check what customers value and what competitors are doing so you understand where changes can strengthen your offer in market.
Find efficiencies in your products, services and operating model
Changing your products and business model could deliver the same or better outcomes at less cost, using less energy, emissions and waste.
Short term: make small product changes to reduce waste
- Consider the full lifecycle of your products, from sourcing and production to customer use and disposal.
- Update materials where possible by switching to reusable, recyclable, certified or locally sourced inputs. Reduce use of hard-to-recycle packaging and move away from single-use items.
- Explore take-back approaches so customers can return products for reuse, repurposing or recycling.
Long term: assess your product strategy and business model
For a bigger shift, rethink the purpose of your product and how they could last longer, be repaired, be upgraded, be resold or become a service. This can reveal new opportunities and get more value from the materials and assets you already use.
- Look at the problem the product solves, not only the product itself. Then identify environmental, social and financial impacts across its lifecycle.
- Challenge the current model: could you rent instead of buy, recover resources, extend product life or sell outcomes rather than physical things?
- Use the refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, repurpose and recycle lens to generate ideas, then involve your team to test more ambitious options.
- Assess feasibility, customer experience implications, capability gaps and collaborators, then define the next step to start testing change.
Money and emissions reductions
Identify costs and savings for energy and emissions
Use your financial statements, forecasts and modelling to understand the costs and opportunities.
- Review your balance sheet, profit and loss, and cash flow statement for signs of risk or opportunity, such as rising energy, freight or maintenance costs.
- Check if retained earnings, inventory improvements or other changes could release cash for sustainable investment.
- Use a 12-month cash flow forecast and financial modelling for larger changes such as fleet shifts, equipment upgrades or operational redesign.
Funding options for energy and emissions reduction
Here are some possible options for funding changes.
Bank loans
Many banks offer loans with lower interest rates for specific projects or purchases to make your business more sustainable. These are usually called sustainable or green loans.
Government funding
Local or central government financial support can fund some of the costs of a climate action project.
Private investment
Funding from investors can be a good option if you need a large cash injection to transform your business.
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