Sustainable September: Conscious Capital

At the beginning of 2020, the Group set up an internal committee, later named the ‘Conscious Capital Forum’, to consider and address ways to reduce our carbon footprint and better coordinate the Group’s already established social and governance initiatives.

Our Conscious Capital mission is to become Net Positive by sustainably creating positive value for all our stakeholders, and in so doing, reduce the impact of our business activities on the environment and have a positive impact on our society.

One of our goals is to become carbon neutral by the end of 2025. This is an ambitious target with many competitor organisations aiming for either 2030 or 2035. It is also not typical to include Scope 3 emissions in the measurement criteria, likely because doing so makes reaching carbon-neutral a much greater challenge. Scope 3 emissions are those that are not directly caused by the business but are a consequence of our business activities. This means we are including the daily commute of our staff in our calculations which accounts for almost 60% of our total Group emissions.  

The first step in reducing our emissions was to better understand where they were coming from.

When we first set about calculating our total emissions, we decided to work with an external carbon audit company, who pointed us in the right direction as to the data we would require and how to go about collecting it.

Working out Scope 1 and 2 emissions is relatively simple; it’s a case of looking at invoices from energy providers and converting this to a carbon measurement. Calculating Scope 3 however proves a little trickier, as it means understanding how each of our 190 employees are traveling to work each day and what the resultant emissions are. To do this, initially we sent out surveys by email. This does not however produce the most accurate or timely data. Recently, our development team have been working on installing a pre-log-in pop-up which will ask employees how they travelled to work that week. This will provide us with a much more accurate picture when it comes to commute-related carbon.

Now two years into our journey to carbon neutral, we are established in our carbon measurement and validation processes. One of the most useful developments has been the creation of a carbon dashboard which pulls together all of our carbon data into visuals that are easy to understand. Yet to be factored into the dashboard is the impact of the major carbon offset projects we have undertaken. Thus far, we have planted more than 8,000 trees in the Isle of Man and Africa as part of our promise to plant two trees for every account we open. In the next few months, we hope to begin expanding our internal carbon reporting to better inform our future Conscious Capital decisions.

Nancy Shefford, Accountant at Capital International Group

Disclaimer: The views, thoughts and opinions expressed within this article are those of the authors and not those of any company within the Capital International Group (CIG) and as such are neither given nor endorsed by CIG. Information in this article does not constitute investment advice or an offer or an invitation by or on behalf of any company within the Capital International Group of companies to buy or sell any product or security or to make a bank deposit

The regulated activities within Capital International Group are provided by its member companies, all licensed by the Financial Services Authority in the Isle of Man or the Financial Sector Conduct Authority in South Africa. For further information please visit www.capital-iom.com 

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