Scotland’s Climate Week
This week is Scotland’s Climate Week, an event that encourages coming together to tackle the climate emergency. The focus is taking action in areas where we can have the most impact as individuals. Home heating and car emissions are two of the most effective, as is reducing waste.
Encouraging sustainable living and working is a hugely important to GrowBiz, and as an organisation we’ve embraced a hybrid working model, which drastically cuts car journeys. Many of our learning sessions, 1-1 client interactions and team meetings are held over video conferencing.
GrowBiz also considers sustainability and the climate when making purchases and works hard to reduce, reuse and recycle. One example is our recent office refurbishment, when, rather than purchasing new office equipment, we sourced reusable surplus furniture from the Kinross Wooden Products Company.
Learning about how to be more sustainable as a micro-business or single self-employed person isn’t always easy, as many carbon calculators are created for larger business and aren’t always relevant, additionally there can be a lot of jargon to navigate around. GrowBiz provides easy to understand and implement suggestions and ideas for our clients by means of regular tips and tricks, 1-1 advice, learning events and resources.
Member of the GrowBiz team are well-placed to offer this support, prioritising sustainability and green practices in their own work and home lives. Having ‘climate conversations’ and pooling ideas is a regular feature of team meetings. Below, a few team members share suggestions for things they’ve already done in their own day to day living to take action on the climate emergency, and what they personally plan to do next:
Janet Hunter
“At home we have a pellet boiler, old solar panels for hot water, try to grow vegetables and have ‘wild’ areas in the garden. I buy food that’s in season, source local suppliers and work had to minimise waste. I rarely throw things away, recycling amongst family and friends. Travelling in a remote area with almost no public transport remains a challenge!
“I want to get better at factoring the extra time it takes to cycle locally and only use the car for travelling more than 10K.
“In the long term—new windows, a greenhouse and an electric car.”
Karen Martin
“At the Courtyard Bothy [Karen’s self-catering holiday let business], we generate our own electricity through an array of solar panels. We store the energy generated in a battery for use in the evenings and early mornings to reduce our dependancy on the grid. The electric generated powers the air source heat pump which provides heating and hot water for guests during their stay. We also send excess electric back to the grid.
“We have an EV charger in the parking space to make it easy for guests to charge their electric car overnight. We also drive an electric car ourselves. We source the food/drink in our welcome basket from local suppliers, we grow fruit for guests in the garden and grow flowers to attract bees, butterflies and other wildlife. We encourage guests to explore responsibly and provide lots of information on activities within walking/cycling distance.
“What we plan to do next—we've signed up to the Green Tourism Award and are working our way through their dashboard to identify more changes we can make to become even more green and hopefully achieve a gold award.”
Daniel Muir
“I’ve had an electric car for 2.5 years and always try to buy the most energy efficient appliances. I charge/run them overnight where possible, which is cheaper and also better for the grid/maximising use of renewable energy. And mainly I just try to minimise all energy use.
“What's next? I'd like to get solar panels one day.”
Abi Shepherd
“As a household we have an electric car, and I’m also really pleased that we’ve managed to drastically cut food waste by being more organised with our shopping and storage. For example, I’m careful to buy only what we need, make sure the things that need to be eaten first are placed at the front of cupboards and fridge, and I regularly check use-by dates and freeze anything that we’re unlikely to eat in time.
“What’s next—I’ve gone plastic free for quite a few disposable household items such as sponges, razors, cotton-buds and toothbrushes. I want to build on that and cut even more plastic out of our lives.”
Kate McLaughlin
“I buy second hand, especially kids stuff—the world does not need more brightly coloured plastic in it! Plus, we're pretty imaginative about repurposing things that would otherwise have reached the end of their life.
“On our to-do list: Better windows for the house and be better at growing our own veg.”
Angela Laurie
“We walk whenever possible—we are a mile to and from school and the kids are in a much better frame of mind to learn after a wander to school (or sometimes a charge to school depending on how late we leave the house!).
“We grow our own veg, and make the most of using local freebies page where people advertise all manner of things that can be used for a second lease of life.
“Plans upcoming: Insulation—our house can be quite cold in the winter so insulation is at the top of the list for this coming winter!”
If you’d like to chat to a member of our team about how you can take climate action in your business and day-to-day living, just get in touch: connect@growbiz.co.uk