Small World – Environmental policy – January 2022
We pledge to protect our customers in developing economies from the effects of climate change by ensuring that our emissions are in line with the Paris agreement targets.
We will do this by measuring, reporting and reducing the emissions of our operations on an ongoing basis.
“As our business grows our emissions won’t: i.e. we will separate our company’s growth from our future emissions”.
“We also commit to continue to be a net zero company by offsetting our emissions through tree planting”.
We also pledge to reduce our future emissions by ensuring the following:
● Continue to monitor and improve reporting goals to formalise environmental commitments using this framework and reporting each year.
● Create a benchmark year and continue to offset Small World’s carbon emissions.
● Consider improving insulation and auditing hot water and heating settings on office buildings.
● Consider energy efficiency measures. Switch to green electricity suppliers.
● Consider water-saving devices in bathrooms, and install water meters.
● Consider purchasing recycled paper for receipts. Migrate customers to paperless transactions if local regulatory conditions allow.
● Consider purchasing recycled office supplies and using a dedicated business recycling organisation.
● Continue to replace face to face meetings with video conferencing. Change travel policies to reduce foreign travel. Consider taking greener more direct flights rather than flights which involve transfers.
● Choosing smaller, hybrid or electric hire cars will reduce emissions. Avoid or combine car-based journeys and replacing journeys with video conferencing. Choose rail journeys where possible.
● Work with our cash handling suppliers to introduce smart safes and help reduce unnecessary cash handling journeys.
● Consider Cloud Computing suppliers with strong environmental credentials and run inhouse IT on renewable energy.
● Calculated the carbon footprint of employees working from home versus their commuting emissions in 2021.
Offsetting
Along with these emissions reductions, Small World will offset its carbon emissions by planting trees in Colombia using the One Tree Planted organisation. Not only does this tree planting help capture our carbon emissions from the atmosphere it also helps restore and protect these parts of Colombia too. We have calculated that 10 trees planted by One Tree Planted will sequester or capture 1 tonne of carbon dioxide through the air.
To offset Small World’s full 2019 - 2020 carbon emissions we commit to planting 3728 trees to help reforestation projects in Choco in Colombia.
This means our customers can have confidence using Small World for their money transfers across the world knowing that they are having a positive impact on the planet that we all share.
Small World - a Net Zero company.
References
I. Paris Agreement
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement
II. Green House Gas Protocol
III. Science-Based Targets
https://sciencebasedtargets.org/
IV. One Tree Planted Colombia
https://onetreeplanted.org/collections/latin-america/products/colombia
