We must never underestimate the positive climate impact we can make when we come together to take collective action.

On Tuesday 9th November at LinkedIn Local Farnham - an event we founded and have run since January 2019 - we hosted a 'Sustainability Special' for 35 local businesses.

Here’s what went down that evening...

Welcoming the community to our 28th monthly event

Tim opened our 28th event with a short presentation about the history of LinkedIn Local Farnham and what's on the horizon for 2022.

Among other changes, we are shaking up the way we manage our 5-in-5 speaker presentations, by making it an application process instead of slots being issued on a first come, first served basis. The reason for this is to ensure that all presentations are high-quality, non-salesy, and not death by PowerPoint. We're looking forward to reinvigorating these great sessions and seeing what our community members come up with in the new year. Applications are open!

A 'Sustainability Special' and the importance of educating our community

We are usually speaking to the echo chamber on social media, so it was brilliant to present to a room full of people whose knowledge about climate change, biodiversity collapse and the role that businesses can play in tackling these issues was effectively zero.

Education is such an important part of climate leadership. Working in sustainability for over a decade and being so close to the climate narrative on a daily basis makes it easy to forget that most people still don't know what's really going on in the world - or they do, but have chosen blissful ignorance. And who can blame them? After all, the climate crisis seems insurmountable.

I started by going back to basics and giving everyone some classroom nostalgia by talking about the greenhouse effect and the impact that ever increasing amounts of greenhouse gases are having on our climate. I then listed the many knock-on effects of a rapidly warming planet, including biodiversity loss and ecological breakdown.

After setting the scene and bringing the current state of the world into stark reality thanks to some highly visual slides, I then jumped into my main presentation: 5 Ways to Make Your Business More Sustainable.

Measure your impact, start taking action, use the SDGs, think global, act local

My first tip and recommendation was for every business in the room to measure their current environmental impact and carbon footprint. After all, any credible business net zero strategy starts with measuring and understanding your emissions.

Emissions levels remain too high and the rate of decarbonisation is still too slow. We need every business to step up, set ambitious emissions reduction and net zero targets, and then take the required steps necessary to achieve them. After all, a plan is nothing without action.

My next three tips were: just start taking action - no action is too small and every business needs to start somewhere; let the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) guide you - they are the closest thing we have to a strategy for the planet and businesses can (quite easily) align their actions to one or more of them; and to think globally and act locally - the Internet and other technologies allow us to support causes and help people on the other side of the world, but we need to remember to give back to local communities too.

Offset your remaining emissions - help from our friends at Ecologi️

My fifth and final tip - and remember these all had to be very digestible and actionable for the audience - was to offset any remaining emissions. And this is where our friends at Ecologi came into play.

We have been using Ecologi as a business since the day we incorporated the company back in August 2020. (I also have a family subscription with them.) This great organisation has made it so easy for individuals, families and businesses to help restore the health of the planet through an easy monthly subscription. Users' money supports a combination of legitimate reforestation projects and the funding of impactful climate solutions through Gold Standard. Ecologi's finances are publicly available so you can see where money is spent. They have also recently launched a crowdfunding campaign.

The LinkedIn Local Farnham Big Sustainability Pledge

It's one thing all being in a room together and shaking our heads at the terrible state of the planet, but it's another thing entirely to leave that room and start taking some positive action. And that's exactly what we need businesses both large and small all over the world to do. And now!

So, we asked our members to commit to taking some positive climate action.

We are delighted to report that at least ten businesses (that we know of) have already said they would like to have their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions calculated and that they will do this in 2022. There are also now 9 LinkedIn Local Farnham Ecologi subscriptions, which have already made a collective impact of planting 5,475 trees and reduced an additional 150 tonnes of CO2e.

Avery & Brown will be supporting the LinkedIn Local Farnham community to take positive climate action in any way we can - all completely pro bono - as yet another way of showing that we walk the walk and are fully committed to our purpose of inspiring others to be a force for good.

We will also be working with Ecologi to track the ongoing collective impact of the community, so please watch this space for updates on that front. To sign up to Ecologi today, use this referral link and an additional 30 trees will be planted in both our forests.

As always, if you have any questions or if you'd like to chat to us about our regenerative business journey, please don't hesitate to get in touch.