Sustainability Policy
The Sustainable Sidekicks are a sustainability and behaviour change consultancy with a mission to support and empower business owners, event managers and green champions have the greatest impact on reducing their impacts and increasing their engagement for the benefit of planet, people and responsible profit.
Values:
The Sustainable Sidekicks value most:
- Mother nature and the wonders of planet earth
- Community and collaboration
- Learning and knowledge sharing
- Breaking down the business as usual mould
- Freerange working (non-geographical restrictions)
- Changemakers
Which informs our business aims of:
- Inspiring and supporting those who want to make a change
- Making education and training accessible
- Creating an organisation and working culture that doesn’t rely on convenience, consumerism or aviation travel
- Financially supporting grassroots projects on the frontline of environmental and social crises
- Funding rewilding
- Creating time for volunteering and time in nature
Values
The Sustainable Sidekicks identify that the world is facing a raft of interconnected social and environmental crises including:
- Climate chaos
- Ecological destruction and biodiversity loss
- Overuse and waste of resources
- Gender and racial inequalities
- Climate colonialism leading to climate refugees
These are being exacerbated by financial greed, power and wealth inequalities from:
- Business conglomerates
- The global North-South divide
- Consumerism and the linear economy GDP measured on financial growth over human and environmental wellbeing
Whilst the environmental sector has positive impacts it also has huge issues around:
- Lack of diversity In 2017, ‘environment professionals’ were the second least diverse profession in the UK (above farmers)’
- Carbon impacts –Climate scholars are the most frequent flyers
- Funding and wealth disparities – Funded projects win more funding. Grass roots and front-line projects run on volunteers and low-paid work
- Greenwashing – Lack of regulation means products and projects can make misleading claims through LCA’s, skewed data and mis-use of well-known words e.g. bio, eco, green.
Business Vision
Consultancy/social enterprise working remotely from overland locations with a low carbon online platform empowering environmental superheroes whilst funding rewilding projects and front-line grass roots projects.
Scope of Vision:
The Sustainable Sidekicks have defined the scope of the policy:
- Online carbon footprint (websites, emails and cloud storage)
- Waste minimisation
- Remote working
- Funding rewilding projects
- Supporting underrepresented young people to join the sustainability sector
2022 Commitments:
The Sustainable Sidekicks are committed to these Sustainable Development Goals and will report annually against them:
Environmental
- Move to 100% green independent European hosting for all websites and training content
Ideally avoiding large conglomerate servers and choosing verified energy provision - Reduce the online carbon footprint
As the largest and most tricky carbon impact of the business, an action plan will focus on reducing stored emails, unused and large files stored in the cloud - Follow the waste hierarchy and circular economy in all purchases to minimise waste
Focusing on prevention and reuse/second-hand before buying new. Any new items will then be chosen for their recycled content, reusability and recyclability. - Promote circular economy principles in all contracts and training
- Encouraging circular economy thinking to minimise waste, toxic material usage and reimagine the linear economy.
- Share behaviour change techniques to help environmental communication resonate outside of the eco echo chamber
Freely share learnings and tips from behavioural psychology and social practice theory to increase environmental behaviour change without having to convert everyone to become environmentalists.
Social
- Study and commit to break-down the issues of intersectional environmentalism
Highlight and address the link between social and environmental injustices and share learnings to address the lack of diversity in the sector
- Support young aspiring environmental and social campaigners
Provide 50 online training spaces a year for young people around the world, focusing on underrepresented groups within the environmental sector - Develop a mentoring service to support aspiring change makers
Offer volunteer mentoring for young people including continuing with the Catalyse Change programme
Financial
Donate 10% of all online content to environmental and social grass-root projects
Donate 20% of all consultancy income to Rewilding project funding
This sustainability policy will be reviewed on an annual basis by the Head Sustainable Sidekick, Livvy Drake .
Signed …………………………………..
Date 01.04.2022