Any credible business net zero strategy starts with measuring and understanding its 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.

At Avery & Brown, we want to play our part and practice what we preach. It's part of our commitment to becoming a regenerative business - one which gives back far more to society and the planet than what it takes from them.

We are delighted to announce that we have had our Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions calculated by Pilio Group, an independent energy and environmental consultancy.

Read on to find out our results and what this means.

Avery & Brown's carbon footprint in 2020/21

Reporting period: 11th August 2020 to 21st June 2021

Our 2020-21 carbon footprint is 7,045 kgCO2e (or 3,523 kgCO2e per employee).

So, that's just over 7 tonnes of CO2e emissions that we have been responsible for as a business in our first year. Here's the high-level breakdown of our emissions sources:

• Procurement - 84% (5,916 kgCO2e)
• Energy and water - 11% (808 kgCO2e)
• Transport - 5% (321 kgCO2e)

In line with our commitment to share every step of our regenerative business journey and to always be fully transparent, we have made our Pilio report publicly available. Just click the button below to access it.

And how much have we offset this year?

We are happy to report that this year, through Ecologi alone, we have planted 2,069 trees and we have purchased 61.95 tonnes of CO2e offsets. That means we have offset almost 9x more than we have emitted, just via our Ecologi subscription. Ecologi provides a full breakdown of where our trees have been planted and the projects that our Gold Standard CO2e offsets have supported.

And Ecologi isn't the only service we use. We have planted an additional 135 trees by using the Refoorest Chrome plugin and another 159 through Treeapp.

Important: We are aware that we have some missing data from our footprint calculations (e.g. waste and downstream emissions due to being in a leased office), and we also know that it is difficult to calculate every tonne of carbon we have ownership of. And it is for those reasons that we offset so much more than we can measure.

In all probability, Avery & Brown is a carbon negative business already, but we are not going to make that claim yet due to our missing data. However, the good news is that Pilio Group is happy for us to call ourselves a net zero business, so we are absolutely delighted!

So, what's next?

Reduce, reduce, reduce!

Understanding your emissions and where they come from is what allows you to make a realistic plan for emissions reductions. We are going to focus on our procurement policies and I'm going to try and walk or cycle to the office instead of driving, which will have a big impact on our overall business emissions even if I do that on just a day or two each week. (It will be easier during the summer months!)

Working on continually reducing our business emissions as we grow and scale is going to be much easier thanks to the fact we have started in the right way by having our emissions calculated by Pilio Group in our first year. With #OperationRegeneration at the heart of our business strategy, we are confident that we will be able to retain our net zero claim as we grow, hopefully even achieving real carbon negativity in Year 2.

As always, we will keep posting every step of our journey here on Outpost and on our social media channels, so please do stay tuned to them if you're interested in following our progress.

We have a hugely exciting next 6 months already planned, so the future is looking bright for our little business; and we're only just getting started. Thanks for reading this post and being a part of our journey.

"It is clearer than ever that lowering emissions is a necessity for every business. The case for net zero in business has become unarguable for all but the hardest to abate sectors – and even these need to consider radical evolution of their commercial models. We have an imperative to halve emissions by 2030 if our world is to avoid the worst impacts of climate change." - Deloitte