What does Sustainability In Business actually mean?

Sustainability in business generally refers to the impact a company has on the Environment, on the communities local to its operational areas (be that office structures, stores, warehouses,etc or indeed its service areas to its end users) as well as its impact on society as a whole. All of which are often referred to as a business’ ‘Carbon Footprint’. Now part of everyday business, senior task forces and often key members within a business will be tasked with road mapping a sustainability strategy to reduce the business’ Carbon Footprint and reduce it’s negative impact on each of the above core areas as a direct result of that strategy and changes made to make this happen. Many businesses set individual goals and targets as a means of benchmarking success for key sustainability
measures that mean something specific to them and their respective industries. As such the United Nations introduced the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) in 2015, as a globally recognised framework to which businesses can look to manage and measure their own goals against 17 key suggested objectives. Aligned to the SDG’s, sustainability directors of major FTSE 100 businesses and owners of small family businesses alike could help work towards major planetarian and humanitarian milestones in tandem. Everything from carbon reduction to encouraging philanthropic activities for staff, volunteering schemes, community work and even streamlining their supply chains to better support sustainable resourcing. With the introduction of the SDG’s and a shift in legislation across the UN, businesses are able to drive forward on a number of key targets (chosen by them) based on both personal and industry specific sustainability interests, also harnessing feedback from stakeholders and shareholders, to better contribute to the environment and the communities they impact.

So What does Sustainability mean to us?

At FTG Ltd, we acknowledge that our operations have an effect on the environment and have identified our key environmental aspects that contribute to our environmental and carbon footprint. Our senior management team are committed to understanding our carbon footprint better and are doing all we can to initially offset this, whilst we put in place an effective carbon reduction programme. Whilst we’re at the earlier stages of our sustainability journey and understanding our own key areas of impact, our team have identified core focuses as follows:
– Consumption of electricity, gas, water, and other fuels
– Waste generation
– Transport emissions
– Use of raw materials
– Procured goods and services with their own environmental impact

With a commitment to our reduction programme our staff are focused on our supply chain and working with key stakeholders to make the necessary changes needed to reach our core goals. Such goals can be demonstrated through our environmental objectives below:
– Monitoring our key resource usage and implementing conservation
techniques to achieve our environmental targets
– Maintaining and improving our waste/recycling policy
– Commitment to achieving Net Zero emissions by 2050
– Working with suppliers to ensure they acknowledge and decrease the
environmental impact of their products and transportation
– Publishing and distribution of an annual organisational sustainability report

What else are we doing about it?

Investors in the Environment is owned and managed nationally by the environmental charity PECT, whose core mission is all about creating sustainable places. PECT created Investors in the Environment in 2010 to bridge the enormous gap between businesses and effective environmental management. Since then, they have worked with hundreds of organisations  (yours truly included) through consultancy and accreditation. Working towards their Bronze program at present, FTG are proud to be doing all we can to further bridge that gap and continue working hard on our own environmental impact journey.
The Bronze programme includes commitments to the monitoring of our gas, water and electrical usage, setting targets for resource efficiency, implementing recycling systems and presenting our progress annually to name a few, and is intended as the first stepping stone within the wider programme, a path to a better future that we are excited to step onto. We’re also incredibly proud to be signed up to the ‘Go Green and Grow’ initiative, outlined by the Hertfordshire Chamber Of Commerce. In 2020, Hertfordshire County Council made a pledge to be a net-zero greenhouse gas county before 2050, as part of their sustainability strategy. This decision followed the latest national targets set by the Government. The ‘Go Green and Grow’ group’s first aim is to support organisations, such as ours, in achieving accreditation for both Scope 1 and 2 emissions reporting (these are the emissions that a company owns or has control over; for instance, from premises or vehicles and from the consumption of electricity). We’re excited to be working closely with the chamber of
commerce and the council to be among those businesses receiving those accreditations.