Shepherds Friendly has completed the process of making its head office carbon neutral as part of its bid for the mutual to become fully carbon neutral by the end of 2024.
The friendly society joined forces with ClimatePartner in December 2021 to help meet its environmental objectives, and in recent months has been making changes, initially to offset carbon produced by head office operations.
Shepherds Friendly’s Green team, established in 2019 to support its environmental policy and made up of volunteers across the business, has also been working closely with national environmental accreditation scheme Investors in the Environment (iiE) which has awarded the society Bronze status.
The scheme is designed to help organisations reduce their impact on the environment, implement projects to become more sustainable, and be recognised for their green credentials.
Nasrin Hossain, culture director at Shepherds Friendly, said: “As a mutual, we’ve always tried to do our bit for the environment. Over the last couple of years, it’s been our mission to step up that commitment and to become a greener business.
“To achieve carbon neutrality at our head office and be awarded a Bronze Investors in Environment accreditation in such a short space of time is definitely a positive step in the right direction. The efforts of our people and our green team have been key in this.
“We’re certainly just at the beginning of our journey and there’s much more we plan to achieve in terms of being more environmentally conscious and sustainable.
“Being a mutual, values play a huge part in what we do, one of these being doing the right thing. So, working together to try and help our planet is just one way we can continue to live our values.”
Dr Jan Maskell, principal consultant and regional lead at Investors in the Environment, added: “Shepherds Friendly has worked extremely hard to improve the organisation’s environmental performance by implementing an environmental management system and has successfully achieved Investors in the Environment Bronze accreditation.
“It has achieved commendable reductions in resource use and their green team have worked with employees on projects and have excellent plans to continue this improvement.”
The carbon neutral target follows the launch of sustainable investments by Shepherds Friendly in 2021 through its ISA products.