Environmental Statement

For us, the environment is everything.

At Cool Earth, we use our values to guide and shape our approach to measuring, monitoring and addressing our impact as an organisation. We’re ambitious about where we want to go with our plans, but we are on a journey and we’ve still got some way to go.

Our values are made up of four traits that capture who we are and how we act: optimistic, smart, open and radical.

We are optimistic.

We understand there is no place for inaction when it comes to fighting the climate crisis and we can all make a difference by making better choices. This is why we have committed to sustainability certification by Planet Mark.

Planet Mark Certification.

For a decade we have been tracking direct carbon dioxide emissions resulting from Cool Earth’s energy usage and business travel activities, as well as measuring water and waste through the Planet Mark Certification programme.

With this, we have implemented a continual improvement programme to reduce our emissions year on year and seek to minimise the waste we send to landfill from our operations, whilst heavily promoting the reuse and recycling of products.

Going Tree Free.

Cool Earth always goes paper-free wherever possible and where we can’t, we use recycled paper.

We walk the walk, so talk the talk.

We encourage environmental awareness among our employees across all our teams and promote environmental action at work as well as at home. Tom’s built a greenhouse out of plastic bottles, Ali drives an electric car, Sarb has built 10 Ecobricks (that’s over 7kg plastic packaging used towards community projects), Louise has the most bountiful of allotments and Nog’s the compost queen – to name but a few.

Our team are passionate about many other environmental issues and as a Cornwall based organisation, we have a love and dedication to the preservation of our oceans and surrounding natural landscape.

Our progress so far

41.4t

total carbon footprint

in 2019

0.8t

total carbon footprint

in 2020

33.3t

reduction in carbon

in 2020

We are radical.

Our programme work is radical, but we aren’t there quite yet with our operations – we’re working on it. Cool Earth engages in dialogue with all of our partners to consider the social and environmental impact of how we deliver our work and support them, where feasible, in addressing their own social and environmental impacts.

We have a 12-month plan to procure all our resources locally and wherever possible in the UK. This will remove the need to use large corporations for sourcing and fulfilment. We currently purchase all our food and drink from local suppliers to limit food miles and support local producers.

We are open.

We have continual internal discussions about how we can be better.

We have an internal working party dedicated to pushing through new approaches and ideas.

All voices are heard. We listen to the team on sustainability approaches and suggestions and we’re open to implementing better practices.

We believe without an engaged and enabled team we know it’s not going to be possible to make the changes we need to as an organisation. We provide training and engagement opportunities to ensure we are motivating employees to change behaviour, innovate and take ownership of solutions.

We are smart.

Cool Earth’s UK office has been based at Tremough Innovation Centre for the last eight years. A building designed and built to the BREEAM Excellence standard, one of the highest levels of environmental accreditation available for new buildings. This ensures that the centre’s environmental impact was low during construction and will also be throughout its lifespan, making it the obvious place for us to call home.

Reducing emissions from travel is a core part of Cool Earth’s environmental commitment. All employees are encouraged and supported to find the most efficient and low carbon ways to travel to and from work, as well as travel for social, business and programme activity. Some of our team use electric bikes and cars, some walk, some get the bus. Some of us drive but car share wherever we can.

Current initiatives.

A flexible working policy. This has been introduced to provide employees with the opportunity to have a healthier work-life balance and to travel to work using sustainable transport methods, including public transport, walking or cycling.

A no fly holiday policy. Employees are rewarded with two further annual leave days for pledging not to fly in that year, enabling time to use more sustainable modes of transport for their holidays.

Partners of the QGC.

As well as working to protect rainforest across the globe, Cool Earth is also committed to improving forest cover in the UK. We are a proud partner of the Queens Green Canopy, a unique tree planting initiative that was created to mark Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022. It invites people from across the United Kingdom to “Plant a Tree for the Jubilee”.

Individuals, villages, cities, counties, schools and businesses are encouraged to play their part to enhance our environment by planting trees during the official planting season between October to March.

Giving back.

We help our team give back to the environment both locally and globally. Initiatives include:

Volunteering. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020 Cool Earth launched a staff volunteer programme to assist at pop-up vaccination centres. It plans to keep this initiative available to all employees to use two working days a year to volunteer for nominated local causes.

Workplace Giving. In response to the increase in domestic abuse cases during the global lockdowns in the Covid pandemic of 2020, Cool Earth introduced a workplace giving scheme whereby employees can donate to this cause and have it matched five times over by a generous board member.