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PM Forum - Birmingham

Climate change strategy makes business sense

A climate change and environmental strategy can deliver real revenue and cost-saving benefits to a business, and should be viewed as an opportunity and not a threat.

This was the advice of Sarah Schepers, Head of Marketing at the CarbonNeutral Company and keynote speaker at the PM Forum's first ever "Green Agenda" event in Birmingham on 16 July.

"While many companies still think of global warming as a corporate social responsibility issue, business leaders need to approach it in the same hard headed manner as any other strategic threat and opportunity," she said. "Business has to take steps to reduce their carbon footprint, for the sake of global warming, not least as scientific consensus is now saying we must reduce global emissions by 80 percent by 2050 to avoid serious problems on a worldwide scale.

"Climate change is not sector-specific; every business has a carbon footprint."

The CarbonNeutral Company is the world's leading carbon offset and climate consulting business. Since it was created in 1997 it has reduced over 1 million tonnes of carbon on behalf of numerous national companies including Sky and Corus.

"A climate change strategy must be at the heart of business strategy, and look at both internal and external efficiencies towards reducing a businesses' carbon footprint.

"Externally, there are some significant benefits to a business from becoming carbon neutral, which can be used as a powerful way of communicating with stakeholder groups. For example, it presents the opportunity for brand differentiation by being able position a product as carbon neutral. It can also benefit graduate recruitment programmes, with University leavers increasingly keen to work for a business with an environmental strategy.

"Internally, quick wins include turning off PC's, installing motion sensitive lights, and encouraging car sharing to meetings and using the train rather than flying to meetings.

"The key is to identify targets for carbon reductions and how the business will communicate its carbon neutral status when achieved."

Before Sarah's presentation, Francis Drasar, Finance Director at law firm Martineau set the scene with an entertaining romp through Birmingham's industrial past with his presentation entitled "the Men who made Birmingham". Francis then went on to talk about the steps that Martineau have taken to identify and reduce their carbon footprint, for example: "We've taken a number of practical steps to reduce our carbon footprint, including encouraging staff to use public transport, with the result that 50 percent of our partners and staff frequently do so."

Francis added: "The most significant element of a businesses' carbon footprint is its energy consumption and, in the long term, businesses will need to put pressure on landlords to use greener energy."

Feedback on the session was excellent with attendees agreeing that the information provided gave them some real tools to convince their partners that the green agenda should be moved to a position of prominence!

Diane Wood
Diane Wood PR

Hilary Campton
V Formation Ltd

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