Our annual Carbon report is in and we’ve reduced our emissions by a MASSIVE 13.5%!

Our target was a 10% cut, so exceeding it is a fantastic achievement and a testament to the hard work of our team.

In this blog, we sit down with our MD Paul Edwards to discuss Edwards Commercial Cleaning’s Net Zero journey so far.

When was your first Carbon Report and why did you decide to start?

We felt that, along with our clients, we really needed to start to measure our emissions and report them through a third party. Imvelo is a local company owned by Tamma Carel and along with her team, we were advised and guided along an initial path towards becoming Net Zero.

Allan Jeff and Nick Devitt ran an online course called, To Net Zero, organised by NBSL and fully funded, which was excellent. This really pointed me in the right direction as it’s quite a complicated thing to start and this is where I met Tamma who was one of their guest speakers.

By focusing on Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by all Nation member states of the United Nations in 2015 and thinking about what we could do ourselves to reduce waste and therefore emissions, we started measuring across all three scopes in May 2023.

How did you start?

By prioritising what was important and would make the quickest difference. Some projects were very simple but others took a lot of organising and work to implement. Going for the so-called, ‘easy hanging fruit’ meant that we made a start and felt that we were starting to achieve our targets. It was really important that our management team bought into Net Zero and contributed with ideas and helped make things happen.

What is Net Zero?

Put simply it’s about balancing emissions and removing carbon. Running a sustainable business is so important to us but we knew it would take time. Giving us a target to achieve Net Zero by 2030 focused our minds and gave us a date to work towards. Personally though I wanted to achieve this as quickly as possible but it’s a complex thing to do.

Explain the steps you took and are taking to reach Net Zero?

We looked at what we thought would be the areas where we used the most power, travelled the most miles, used not so nice chemicals and where those went after use. One major thing was to try and remove as much plastic, especially single use plastic across the business and ensure that plastic we did use was recycled and could be recycled after use. Waste was also a big thing for us. Because of the way we signed people, trained staff, audited accounts and did reports etc we were using lots of paper. This paper was then driven back to the office where it was filed or stored. This was wasteful and took up space. We were literally chopping down dozens of trees!

So where did you start?

We introduced Chromebooks, moved to Google Workspace, started saving everything to the cloud and reduced as many forms, sheets and records as we could. Signing up and training via Dochub, auditing through our bespoke system and developing portals for clients to view policies, procedures and many compliance requested items digitally. This took time but the cost in transport alone was significant.

Meetings, where possible became Google Meet, Teams or Zoom calls. This included interviews for new recruits and discussions with suppliers too. Saving mileage and using less fuel was a big thing for us. We downsized vans and moved company vehicles to electric or hybrid as leases expired. We’re still doing this as some leases were for four years.

Was this all measured?

Yes, Imvelo designed a spreadsheet for us to put many things on like mileages, waste weights, electric usage and a whole lot more. It took a bit of organising but the admin team were excellent and we diligently started in May 2023 to measure as much as we could.

What was the most difficult thing to do in your Net Zero journey so far?

It’s not really about difficulty, it’s more about time and deciding which options to take. For example, we wanted to have the biggest impact possible with plastic reductions but, at the same time, wanted to introduce new products which were more environmentally friendly and were safer to use for the staff, clients and of course the environment itself. Pollution was a major consideration. With this in mind, we scoured the UK and then Europe looking for the best for us and ideally something that would also be economically beneficial for us and the customers. We visited exhibitions in Amsterdam and travelled far and wide looking at various options and considering where products were made and what from as well as how well they worked.

Knowing that transport and the use of petrol and diesel was going to be the biggest source of our emissions, we looked at how we could reduce this and where we could get better value and save costs. We replaced larger vans with smaller vans and arranged for suppliers to help by delivering stock directly to clients. This reduced the need for storage as well as cutting out the ‘middle man’ namely, us! Unfortunately as our operations staff take the van home and don’t have charging facilities there and because the electric vehicles available currently don’t have the range we need, we can’t yet move to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly mode of transport but it’ll come.

So year one was the first Carbon Report?

Yes it was and Imvello produced that for us and then made further recommendations to us. We published and shared the report with customers and on our portal. From this we decided that in year two we’d set a target to reduce emissions by 10%.

So what happened?

We were thrilled to have reduced by 13.5% with the help of suppliers, managers and making decisions based on the Sustainable Development Goals we chose and knew would have the biggest impact. Our reduction directly impacts our customers who are also measuring emissions and looking at their suppliers to achieve Net Zero so they, in turn, achieve their goals.

Are you close to Net Zero?

We can and will do more and have plans to reduce more waste with better planning, liaising with suppliers and brainstorming ideas with the team. Once we’ve done as much as we could, we’ll look at offsetting but we’re already planting trees through our partnership with Ecologi where we’re on our way to our first 1000 trees. I think we’ll get to Net Zero before 2030 and that’ll be something worth celebrating.

What advice would you give to a business looking to start on a sustainable journey?

There are a few routes you could go. B Corp is a certification and is about using business as a force for good, balancing profit with a purpose. Net Zero is our chosen route but either way is excellent for our planet and reduces waste and emissions. I’d recommend getting professional advice, joining one of the many environmental groups, looking at social media and also seeing if there’s funding available for a suitable course. The NBSL one I completed was excellent.