Evolved Solutions; a carbon positive business

Since the inception of Evolved Solutions, we have been targeting various Environmental initiatives, to be carbon positive (not just zero!!), which we’ve previously provided updates on in our news page.

For our 2021 score card and future targeting, we have focused entirely on Carbon as a metric combined with Safety initiatives. To drive these targets, we’ve gone to the extent of attempting to calculate the carbon used.

We’ve done this to motivate ourselves (and others) and try and be as transparent, as possible.

Companies like our (management consultancies, desk based types!) can’t fully claim carbon credits for companies we’ve helped to achieve significant industry carbon reductions, but we want to capture that benefit, so have taken a credit of 10% of the carbon reduction as our own.

We also believe you cannot fully separate your working and private lives. In our case, they are also heavily intertwined as we work from offices we built beside the house and share so many activities, such as transport.  We also run several businesses, from our Home/HQ, so it’s difficult to separate them!

It’s clear that industry initiatives have far greater carbon reductions than office/domestic one’s, but we have focused on both as key priorities, which can be seen in the calculations below. The target being to make both our office/domestic lives and business both carbon positive.

Learnings;

·        We’ve always understood this, but this confirmed that Cost and environment, tend to go ‘hand in hand’, for the vast majority of Decommissioning industry initiatives. If it costs less, it tends to use less energy!

·        Flights are carbon heavy! They alone could stop small companies becoming carbon positive! If it wasn’t for planned flights, 2022 we’d achieve carbon positive status on office/domestic as well as on overall business.

·        We are a rural based business so we were also trying to understand the impact of travel. The lockdown proving that online meetings are a good way of managing the majority of business interactions and should be considered firstly.

·        Converting the office/house to electric (Air source heating) and then seeking to use as much solar power directly is financially and environmentally a ‘no brainer’.

·        Our focus on Recycling/re-use/repair is working well. Repair of laptops and charity shop toy ‘swapping’ being good examples.

·        The initial purchase of a  new Electric cars may be expensive, but if you charge through day from ‘free’ (ish) solar, then it’s also a ‘no-brainer’!

·        It’s difficult to assess the carbon used in building/manufacturing and also how much you should accept, as your own. For example, a buildings embodied carbon. We’ve just ignored it and put it under the heading ‘too difficult to calculate’!

·        Carbon offsetting by Tree planting (and rewilding) and growing your own food is extremely carbon beneficial but also to your health and soul! Take a lunch ‘break’ working in the garden, you’ll enjoy it!