Climate change continues to keep us up at night (especially in summer, when it’s too hot to sleep anyway). It’s why we choose to work with organisations that have climate action as their sole purpose. We also do what we can in our own operations to reduce our carbon footprint and advocate for climate-worthy causes. We’re not perfect, but no business is. The goal is to get a little better every year, shrinking our footprint, refining our processes, and putting our effort where it'll do the most good.
Zero Emissions Day: Business meets sustainability
On Zero Emissions Day (21 September 2024), we hosted a panel event with our friends at Portable. It featured industry leaders discussing business’s role in reducing carbon emissions. We had about 50 people show up in person, plus 100 more on the live stream. Huge! It’s always encouraging to see other businesses get around the climate cause.
A big thank you to our panellists Jane Kern (Bank Australia), Laure Legros (WorkforClimate), Andrew Apostola (Portable), and Emma Pocok (Front Runners) who openly shared their diverse perspectives in the session.
A few key takeaways:
- Australia emits only about 1 per cent of all greenhouse gases, but could help the world cut a further 7 per cent, creating an economic boom in the process, according to an eminent economist. (Article on SMH)
- Electrification is a technology that's ready to drastically reduce Australia’s emissions. We don't need to wait for anyone to invent anything. It just needs to be rolled out and made mainstream. (BZE research on this)
- If we don't turn off the fossil fuels that Australia is exporting, we don't stand a chance of keeping global warming below two degrees. Go to adutyofcare.com to pledge your support for a piece of legislation that's before the Senate right now.
- Carbon offsetting is important and a good place to start. But we need a huge, seismic shift in the way that we think about Net Zero, and focus needs to be on emissions reductions rather than offsets.
- Check out our panellists’ recommendations for climate donations: Seed Mob Indigenous Youth Climate Network, Groundswell, Greening Australia, Beyond Zero Emissions, Footy For Climate.
Environmental strategy template
We worked with Portable - with our Business Pickle hat on - to develop their environmental strategy as a business. We’ve shared the process, frameworks, measurements and initiatives in this case study. If you want any of this research, templates, frameworks, we’ll walk you through them for free.
The Business Pickle (Impact Consulting) update
In 2022, we formed The Business Pickle on the hypothesis that we could have greater impact by helping organisations improve their impact. Underlying this was data indicating that most business leaders wanted to take action, but were unclear on where to start. So we aimed to provide case studies, data and strategic roadmaps to create change.
While we had a few great successes, like our work with Portable, many organisations weren’t really ready or committed. Much of the focus in ESG at the moment is on reporting and aligning with new frameworks, rather than implementing new initiatives. So our approach, services and experience didn’t really get traction. In the meantime we were realising success using brand, marketing and digital to grow impactful brands – so we shifted our mentality. Our greatest impact (for now) is in Marketing, and we’ll continue offering Impact Strategy but not focus on growing it (for now).
The Business Pickle offered commercial research, content (podcasts and white paper articles) and ESG consulting services to businesses on their impact improvement journey.
Rethinking our giving model
Since day one, we’ve wanted to use Harvey as a tool for funnelling essential resources towards initiatives that fund climate solutions. When we started out, we committed to an annual 5% donation to climate. In our first 3 years of business, we donated a total of $89,000 to the impactful work of Greening Australia and Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE). And we couldn’t be prouder of this stuff.
Unfortunately, due to a challenging financial position in FY 23/24 we were not able to donate. At all. Which was a difficult conclusion to come to (more details here).
This year, we’re reviewing our giving model and going to move to investing in clean tech companies and donating to fighting climate change. We felt investing in businesses driving change was more aligned to our purpose of ‘Unlocking the potential of the New Economy to leave behind a better world’ than relying solely on charities and government to see the change we want. In other words, we want to put our money where our mouth is.
We haven’t confirmed the final details - we’ll let you know when we do and we’ll combine FY 23/24 contribution with FY 24/25.
Spotlight - clients leading in climate action
It’s also important to acknowledge our clients, who are all doing some wonderful things for the environment:
- Sociable Weaver building sustainable, low-carbon homes;
- Farm My School and their regenerative farming in schools program;
- Cyclion turning waste into energy with no emissions;
- The Salvage Yard helping people build and renovate using reclaimed materials;
- Envirotecture designing passive and sustainable homes;
- Marnie Hawson with her sustainability focused photography;
- Pixii providing organic, waste-free pads and tampons;
- BZE’s research and advocacy for making Australia’s big industries green;
- ATEC driving clean cooking (un-fun fact: it’s a bigger issue than airline pollution);
- NEXA advisory driving change in energy transmission to support renewable sources;
- The Next Economy helping regional economies thrive in the new clean economy;
- A.BCH driving circular fashion and launching Circular Sourcing Marketplace.
