Ecology Building Society’s Carbon Footprint Accounts for the Shift to More Remote Working
Ecology Building Society has a mission to build a greener community through providing ethical savings accounts and sustainable mortgages. The building society lend on projects all across the UK, including sustainable self-builds, renovations, community housing, community shops, woodlands and moorings.
They have been disclosing their carbon footprint of operations and staff commuting since 2012, in order to be transparent and accountable. Also, since 1981 they have also been offsetting all carbon emissions.
2020 was an exceptional year, which disrupted their operations and working arrangements. The shift to many employees working from home reduced emissions arising from commuting. On the other hand, they were aware that homeworking would also have an environmental impact, from heating and electricity use. The team used the new methodology developed by EcoAct to calculate these emissions.
Every year, the building society carries out a colleague survey on commuting (modes of transport, distance, number of journeys per week). For the 2020 survey, it took into account changes in commuting and homeworking patterns during the different periods of lockdown restrictions.
It included questions about colleagues’ home electricity and heating, whether the heating would be on if they were not home working (if heating would normally be off during office hours, emissions were attributed to Ecology), and how many other occupants were present during working hours. The information on occupancy was used to attribute a proportion of the emissions to Ecology. For example, if another occupant was working from home for another organisation, 50% of the home’s emissions were included in Ecology’s total.
As a result, 4.9 tonnes of CO2 arising from homeworking were added onto the carbon footprint for Ecology in 2020. For comparison, the emissions arising from gas heating in their offices were 7.4 tonnes in the whole of 2020. 90% of the emissions from homeworking arose from heating.
This has spurred management to engage with colleagues on how to save energy at home. The emissions from staff commuting fell significantly (from 62 tonnes in 2019 to 40 tonnes in 2020). The team are exploring ways to reduce the emissions from commuting, including setting up an Electric Vehicle Lease scheme.
Ecology have also installed six more electric vehicle charging points in their car park, making a total of eight, where colleagues and visitors can charge their EVs for free. Ecology’s carbon footprint in 2020 decreased to 275 tonnes from 339 in 2019, mainly due to a reduction in commuting and business travel. With this in mind, team members are carrying out a survey on attitudes to working from home to consider our future working patterns and arrangements.
“As a result of the pandemic, many of us have had to shift to more homeworking. Our study to calculate carbon emissions from homeworking, as well enabling us to add homeworking to Ecology’s annual carbon footprint, has promoted awareness of the impact of staff commuting and home energy efficiency” – Alison Vipond, Sustainability Lead at Ecology Building Society
If you would like to get in touch with Ecology Building Society you can email or visit their website.