Achieving net zero status and carbon neutrality

As an environmentally conscious organisation, Acuity are proud to have achieved Net Zero status and to be operating as a Carbon Neutral organisation.

Starting in 2019, we have recorded our emissions footprint and, using this as our baseline year, developed a Carbon Reduction Plan that sets out our targets to continually reduce emissions year on year. As an SME, and particularly one that does not have a production supply chain, our emissions are moderate. However, upon review of our baseline year it was clear that our focus needed to be on reducing travel in order to see a reduction in our overall emissions.

The impact of COVID-19 dramatically reduced our emissions for 2020 and 2021 but, now that travel has become more viable again, we are committed to reducing our levels against our baseline year. We found that the pandemic introduced us to new ways of working remotely that have proved extremely effective for both our employees and our clients. The use of Microsoft Teams in particular has led to a significant reduction in our need to travel and allowed us to significantly reduce our emissions in a sustainable manner.

We have used a carbon emissions calculator in order to determine and monitor our emissions over the last 3 years. This calculator provided us with the tonnes of CO2e we needed to offset in order to achieve Carbon Neutrality. As such we have now reached a point where we record, monitor and reduce all emissions for the business and are able to calculate our carbon footprint using this data.

In September 2022 we took the step to offset the total emissions generated between April 2019 and March 2022. We used Carbonfootprint.com to calculate our emissions and chose to offset them by supporting community carbon offset projects. Their extensive portfolio of projects meet the stringent requirements of the Quality Assurance Standard for carbon offsetting and also provide additional benefits such as biodiversity, education, jobs, food security, clean drinking water and health and well-being in developing countries. We chose to support two projects, the first providing efficient household cookstoves in Guatemala and the second a borehole rehabilitation project in Uganda. A single ONIL Stove will save between 3-4 tons of CO2e per year and helps improve living conditions for households in Guatemala. The borehole project provides a source of clean drinking water by working with community groups to identify broken down boreholes, renovate them and supply a maintenance programme to ensure that clean, safe water is delivered as a result. As well as the natural health benefits it means that families no longer have to boil the water, saving firewood and thereby preventing carbon emissions from being released.

Acuity now offset in full any emissions that are produced by the business on an annual basis to ensure we maintain our Net Zero status and run as a Carbon Neutral organisation. We have just offset our emissions for 2023/2024 and are delighted to have seen another decrease in emissions from last year. Full details can be found in our Environmental Policy and Carbon Reduction Plan.

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