We’re lucky, the businesses which inspired us to take more planet positive action in Nutshell came to us by chance. We’re both fairly sustainability minded in our personal lives, but before this year we’d never really considered that we could also make meaningful changes in the business.

During the early, bleak months of 2021, while we were working with clients who were taking great strides to reduce their customer’s impact on the environment, it occurred to us that we could also be doing more in our own business. It was an (LED) lightbulb moment in the winter darkness!

Although there are some really quick and easy ways to offset carbon, we wanted to dig a bit deeper into what we were producing and what actions would be most meaningful.

Ecologi

For quick and easy carbon offset, Ecologi seems to be the best option. We signed up last week and now have 125 trees in our forest. Most are in a mangrove planting project in north west Madagascar, but we’ve also opted to start planting in the UK. 

We’ve made a pledge that we will plant a new UK based tree for every new client we sign up.
Check out our Ecologi profile - anyone using this link who goes on to sign up with Ecologi will earn us both 30 new trees.

Understanding what we produce

Offsetting carbon is a worthwhile and critical exercise, but obviously the less we create in the first place, the less we need to offset. We wanted to better understand where our weak spots were, so in the spring we took advice from sustainability consultants and reviewed our output. 

As a result we have taken the following actions:

• Recorded the energy output in both of our houses (we both work from home) to measure our carbon footprint. Making our output visible has motivated us to make small changes to bring it down (woolly jumpers very welcome for Christmas). We’ll measure again at the same time next year and see how we’ve done.

• Ensured our electricity continues to be supplied by renewables. It’s a mental note to stay mindful of this when switching to cheaper deals.

• When it comes to transport and commuting our output is really low. Pre Covid we’d typically meet up every six weeks to two months. Now we meet up when the agenda’s pressing and requires some face to face time.

• Our outstanding action to take from the consultation is our web hosting. We’re still reviewing better alternatives for this and would welcome any advice on finding a good provider.

Finally, a pledge we’ve made to each other/the business is to go meat-free at lunchtimes. We both eat considerably less meat than we did a few years ago, and love to share a good plant based recipe, but sticking a vege flag in the sand at lunchtime all works towards making the work day lighter on the environment.

Clients

Working with clients from a range of sectors is what we love about Nutshell. The variety is good for us and learnings taken from one sector can be really valuable in another. It helps us stay creative and test a broad range of approaches.

Whilst we really enjoy working with clients in the sustainability sector (and that’s pretty broad in itself) we’re keen to work with any ‘sustainably minded’ businesses. 

What does that mean? We believe ‘sustainably minded’ businesses are those who see the opportunity for positive change and are ready to act.

Living and working more sustainably is an ongoing road, but we’re delighted to have got started with Nutshell. When it comes to advice on doing it better, we’re all ears.