Wildwood Go Beyond – our B Corp journey
Beyond compliance
Wildwood Ecology understands its responsibility to both society and the environment, which goes beyond just compliance.
We believe that the protection of the natural environment is vital to the wellbeing and survival of us all. Our actions and advice in developing the built environment must seek to halt and restore biodiversity loss, address our own impacts on human induced climate change and help create a better planet for the benefit of future generations.
As such, we are committed to raising our social responsibility and environmental impacts to our employees, clients, suppliers, and collaborators. That’s why we became a proud member of the B Corp community in July 2019, and we’re already proving that by working with others, we can have a big influence and help to shape the global economy for the better. And in 2022 we successfully re-certified (more on that later).
Our B Corp update
It’s worth knowing that every time you buy a product or service from a B Corp, you’re taking a small step towards a better world for all.
To become a certified B Corp, businesses are required to complete a survey called the Business Impact Assessment – or BIA. It’s not just any survey, it’s one of the most comprehensive and challenging tools out there for assessing the real social and environmental impact of a business.
The BIA is operated by the independent non-profit B Lab. It allows businesses to measure the impact their business is having on the Environment, their Workers and the Community, as well as looking at their Governance structure. Businesses must meet a minimum of 80 points out of 200 to certify, as well as making a legal change to their business to place impact on people and planet on the same level as profit.
Our score when we first certified back in 2019 was 80.6 points. We scraped in by the skin of our teeth, so we knew we had a lot to do to make any real impact. We were proud and delighted to complete our first re-certification in 2022 and have improved our score to 84.0 points.
We know and appreciate that people want to work for companies and organisations that stand for something beyond just making money. Again and again, we see brilliant people wanting to join our team and stay with us, because they believe in our vision and share our values.
Science based targets
The Paris Agreement commits the world to a global temperature increase of less than 1.5°C. To meet this target and avoid the worst effects of climate change, global greenhouse gas emissions must be cut in half by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.
Our company joined a growing group of leading companies in 2019 that are setting emissions reduction targets in line with what climate science says is necessary. By doing so, we recognise the crucial part our business can play in minimising the risk climate change poses to the future of our planet.
Wildwood Ecology commits to reduce absolute scope 1 and scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2025 from a 2021 base year and 100% by 2030. The targets covering greenhouse gas emissions from company operations (scopes 1 and 2) are consistent with reductions required to keep warming to 1.5°C.
However, like many companies, suppliers account for a large share of value chain emissions (Scope 3 emissions). By engaging and inspiring suppliers to reduce emissions, we will have a positive impact on our own company operations carbon footprint as well.
Our 2021 baseline has been calculated[1] and, in that year, we emitted a whopping 18.76 tonnes of CO2e. This breaks down as follows:
- Scope 1 – Direct Emissions: 4.90 tonnes of CO2e
- Scope 2 – Indirect Emissions: 0.95 tonnes of CO2e
- Scope 3 – Other indirect Emissions: 12.89 tonnes of CO2e
Based on the calculation of our full emissions (scopes 1-3) we off-set 20 tonnes[2] and by doing so we are currently operating as a carbon net-negative company (-1.24 tonnes). This includes offsetting all our customers carbon we used to travel to their sites and complete their surveys.
We look too at small changes we can adopt; using fellow B Corp companies and products, such as easily repairable Fairphones, the Honest mobile phone tariff; changing our website from a ‘dirty’ site producing 7.59g of CO2 per visit to 1.17g (websitecarbon.com), which runs on sustainable energy with green host provider, Cloudflare; and using an ethical employee pension scheme (Nest). Collectively, these small changes make a big difference.
[1] Calculated by OurCarbon: https://profile.ourcarbon.com/wildwood with a weighting certainty score of 3.27 out of 5 (this a combination of evidence provided and the calculation tool OurCarbon uses to calculate the certainty, with 5 being highly certain, and then a sliding scale downwards).
[2] We use ecologi to offset our carbon emissions: https://ecologi.com/wildwoodecology
Priorities for 2023 – People. Planet. Purpose
People
We value our people and continue to seek ways to support them and help them to grow. We have recently introduced wellbeing days for all our employees. Under this initiative, everyone is entitled to one paid day per quarter allowed to engage in wellbeing activity, either individually or as a part of the Wildwood team.
Similarly, we will also be introducing one paid day per quarter allowed for individual volunteering with a national charity or not-for-profit community group.
Planet
We will continue to use our baseline carbon emission analysis report to focus on reducing our overall emissions and improving how we track them too. There may be elements we may have not fully accounted for and if we work hard on identifying these obscure emissions then we can do something positive about them.
Being a service provider requiring us to visit sites to provide assessments, our focus will be on reducing our travel emissions. We shall first examine if we need to make the journey and if required then seeking lower carbon means which will include smarter use of existing vehicles or identification of alternative transportation options, including public transport where feasible to do so.
Purpose
We will also work on our procurement of equipment and clothing used as part of delivering our services. We are large consumers of various forms of technology, both within the office environment and out on site delivering our services. We will be looking at how we communicate including our use of email traffic, social media usage, our websites and of course how we deliver our reporting services to our clients. As a starting point we will develop a carbon emissions value to our report that will be clearly labelled on the front of our reports and communicate what this means not only to our clients, but across our industry. We are excited about working this out and collaborating with others on how to improve.
Feedback
Have we missed anything out or feel we have not explained something very well, or do you think we have painted too rosy a picture on what we do and consider we’re hiding something? We want to know – we don’t just want this report to showcase the good bits and mask the not so good bits we are doing (or don’t do).
So, tell us about them so we can become even more transparent in our undertakings and help us all to work to create a better business and a force for good.
Richard Dodd, Managing Director
