Groundwork GM | Carbon Literate Organisation

We are delighted to announce that we have been accredited as a Platinum Carbon Literate Organisation by the UN-recognised Carbon Literacy Project.

This prestigious accreditation recognises our commitment to upskill our people, and those we work with, to play a proactive role in reducing our organisational carbon emissions, and work towards a zero carbon future.

Carbon Literacy is defined as, “An awareness of the carbon dioxide costs and impacts of everyday activities, and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions, on an individual, community and organisational basis,” and revolves around a day’s worth of learning and action on climate change.

Our Carbon Literacy training programme is delivered by a range of in-house trainers, all of whom are L3 AET qualified, covering various specialisms including working in community settings, with people who are unemployed and with businesses.

To become accredited as a Platinum Carbon Literate Organisation, we trained 73% of staff from across all departments, including our Trustees, in Carbon Literacy.

As a result of the training, we have initiated 5 significant actions, including:

Signed off of the next phase of our carbon reduction plan – including the rental of 2 electric vehicles to reduce emissions and installation of EV charging points at both of our owned premises
Developed a regular Carbon Literacy practitioner group – to sustain quality, consistency and share knowledge across our training delivery
Moved to a lower emissions concrete for our fencing and landscaping contracts – which has 32% lower CO2e emissions than regular cement
Shifted more of our purchasing to local suppliers – reducing volume of orders from global suppliers by 75%
Started to integrate carbon literacy pledges into performance review processes

Being accredited as a Platinum Carbon Literate Organisation is an important achievement for us because it:

Supports our people to collaborate in identifying and implementing opportunities for carbon reduction on an organisational scale.
Demonstrates our commitment to maintaining a low-carbon organisational culture.
Enables us to drive faster action on climate change.
Sets a positive example of sustainability leadership in our industry.

Deborah Murray, Executive Director at Groundwork Greater Manchester commented:

Being environmentally responsible is one of our core values, so external recognition for something that matters so much to us is even more special. Achieving Platinum Carbon Literate Organisation is testament to the passion, belief, skills and determination of the team here at Groundwork GM who think outside the box at all times to find ways of reducing our own carbon footprint and to inspire and influence others to reduce theirs. We remain committed to Carbon Literacy as a key element of this work and to finding new ways of reaching more audiences through this powerful tool.