Abri is committed to addressing our carbon footprint, and environmental impact, from our own operations such as our corporate offices, our colleague’s travel as well as that of our housing stock.
It is important we have an awareness of the impact our actions have on the environmentand that we incorporate sustainability into our everyday lives. We have already established our retrofit roadmap for decarbonising existing homes and have engaged with external specialists to support us to develop our plans for decarbonising our business and reducing our environmental impact. To date [insert what we’ve done in terms of retrofit].
At Abri tackling climate change is a key priority and we are taking significant steps to address it. We have already recruited 11 passionate and enthusiastic ‘Climate Champions’ across ourcolleague base who will act as ambassadors, promoting sustainable practices and empowering colleagues and customers to minimise our shared footprint. We have partnered with an external training provider, the Carbon Literacy Project, who will deliver training that will helpus develop a low carbon culture across Abri. The Carbon Literacy Project is globally unique –there is nothing else quite like it anywhere. It was recognised as such by the United NationsClimate Change Conference in Paris, COP21, as a transformative action programme.
Our qualified Climate Champions will deliver the training to the rest of our colleagues, ensuring all colleagues become carbon literate. The Carbon Literacy training gives colleagues the opportunity to make realistic and manageable changes to reduce their carbon footprint. It also provides an environment for healthy debate, a chance to meet colleagues from across theorganisation and either begin their carbon journey or enhance it.
Ensuring we reach net zero carbon by 2050 is one of our strategic objectives and ensuring we reach that goal means looking at ways we can reduce the amount of carbon we produce fromour homes and all areas of our business; we are committed to supporting our colleagues andcustomers to make lifestyle choices which reduce carbon impacts. So, we’re working collaboratively with MyBalance to give our colleagues access to purpose-built app that can measure their carbon footprint and suggest ways to improve it.
Although 2020/2021 has been a year with a particular focus on the COVID-19 pandemic, ourworkplace solutions team haven’t let that stop them making changes to improve thesustainability of the corporate real estate. Key areas of work include:
- Lighting improvements across our offices and other sites.
- Waste segregation measures including the use of centralised waste segregation stations.
- Reduction in single use items where possible, in a bid to discourage a throwaway culture.
In 2020 we started Our Future of Work programme, recognising the demands of mass working from home following the COVID-19 lockdowns. As well as the opportunity to promote more sustainable working practices, we launched “The Abri Way” – a strategic, holistic, and flexible framework to communicate our Employee Value Proposition to colleagues and evolve ourculture. It includes an agile working approach which has practical solutions to make workingeasier, more efficient and is underpinned by our wellbeing strategy and commitment to a trust-based culture which includes:
- Work anywhere approach.
- Tools and technology to enable an agile approach.
- Paperless project.