At Situ, sustainability and ESG are fundamental to our business approach. We believe that small steps add up, and that everyone can make a difference, as epitomised by our ‘Be More Starfish’ initiative. Outlined below are the steps we took over the past couple of years towards a more sustainable future – it’s been a busy year!
Our key achievements
Here is a quick round up of our top achievements.
- Awarded Carbon Neutral + Status
- EcoVadis Silver Medal (for the second year in a row)
- £3,500 raised for our partnered charities
- 10.829kg CO2 pledged through Do Nation partnership
- 15.46% reduction in carbon emissions from benchmark value
- Litter picking in: Teignmouth, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Bristol, and Exeter
- Sustainability committee events, including meat-free Monday and clothes swap
- Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DE&I) committee formed, and five ‘Brave Spaces’ held
What we’ve been up to…
Here’s a bit more detail on what we’ve been up to and the steps we’ve been taking to lessen our impact on the environment.
Carbon footprint journey
We have been assessing our carbon footprint on an annual basis since 2020. This involves compiling and evaluating the carbon we produce as a company – from business travel to the way we power our offices. For our most recent assessment, covering the period FY22/23, we decided to assess even more, and included details such as employee commuting and hybrid working. These extra parameters increased our footprint, but this was to be expected, and provided a more realistic view of our footprint.
Reducing emissions takes time, and we wanted to take a more active stance against climate change. Therefore, as part of our FY22/23 footprint, we invested in the following certified carbon projects to offset our emissions:
- Improved cookstoves in India – this project provides improved cookstoves to rural communities, facilitating cleaner cooking practices and reducing health risks from indoor air pollution.
- Solar panel plant in India – it is estimated that this project will replace approx. 492,000 tCO₂e of greenhouse gases per annum by partly supplying the Indian electricity grid, which is primarily fed by thermal/fossil fuel-based power plants.
- Wind farm in Thailand – like the solar panel plant project, this project is to provide clean wind-generated energy to replace electricity supplied from thermal/fossil fuel-based generation methods.
By offsetting our carbon footprint, we were awarded the status of Carbon Neutral Organisation from Carbon Footprint Ltd.
Supporting local schools with tech donations
Following our transition to hybrid working, we realised that some of our laptops were not up to business spec and therefore no longer met our specific requirements. This realisation prompted a refresh in our devices, which resulted in spare equipment that was usable, but no longer suited to our needs.
Once we had wiped our data, we decided to donate these laptops to a local school to help support students in their studies. This proved to be a very fulfilling form of recycling.
Getting Team Situ involved
In FY22, we began searching for ways our employees could engage with our ‘Be More Starfish’ initiative in their personal lives. This brought about a partnership with Do Nation: a platform that provides taster-style pledges, with the goal of leading to permanent changes. These include anything from donating clothes to switching off appliances when not in use.
Through various campaigns run by the sustainability committee, we received 172 pledges with a carbon saving of 10,829kg – the equivalent of five economy roundtrip flights from London to New York!
Our employee-led Sustainability Committee also organised events to raise awareness and promote engagement. Throughout the year, Team Situ were treated to a meat-free burger day – complete with vegan cheese and condiments – and a week-long clothes swap, amongst other events.
Litter picking has also proved popular at Situ. While visiting various cities for partner roadshows, our Situ’ers took time to pick up litter in parks, estates, and even the iconic canals of Amsterdam. Our Situ Heart committee also regularly host litter picks around our home city of Exeter.
Working with our supply chain & Greengage
We work with thousands of accommodation partners, so bringing sustainability practices to the forefront can be a daunting task. However, we are working on solutions for this.
Part of these solutions is the partnership we have held with Greengage since 2021. Greengage issues ECOsmart accreditations for serviced accommodation providers, which means that members of our supply chain can get accredited and receive guidance on their sustainability practices.
Social and governance
As well as the environmental steps we have mentioned above, we also put a strong focus on the other aspects of ESG: social and governance.
‘Connected by People’ is one of our company taglines, and it applies to our employees as much as our clients.
We already offer a great range of benefits to our team, including private health care and reset days for mental wellbeing. In FY22, we reviewed some of our long service benefits. This resulted in an increase of annual leave entitlement for all employees. Furthermore, we updated our long service benefits to include city stays and sabbaticals.
During this timeframe, our focus on wellbeing in the workplace increased. Results included the introduction of mental health first aiders, a partnership with an occupational health provider, as well as wellbeing and resilience training from an external expert for every staff member.
Plans for the future
You can’t mention sustainability without reference to the future. As such, we thought we would give you some sneak previews into our plans for continuing our journey as an environmentally conscious business.
In the coming years, we aim to invite our top accommodation providers to join Sedex, a system that promotes ethical supply chains, and undertake an ESG assessment. This will evaluate ESG risk across our global partner network. We also intend to collect and centralise the sustainability practices of our partners and provide this to our clients, clarifying and easing access to this information.
Additionally, we are now in a position to formalise our carbon footprint goals by signing up to the Science Based Target Initiative. The goal is to halve our emissions by 2030 and aim for Net Zero by 2050.
Watch this space.
Conclusion
It’s been a busy year at Situ, but as our company has grown, we have made sure our sustainability practices developed as well. From investing in carbon certified projects, to encouraging Team Situ to make small changes in their personal lives, our approach to ESG is always developing. We’re excited to see where our sustainability journey takes us.
For more insights into our ESG approach, see our ‘Be More Starfish’ initiative.
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