One small step towards net zero
At Forward Education Trust, we’re considering carefully how we can develop our sustainability journey. We’re looking at this not only from an organisational perspective, where we have bills to pay, energy to consume and a future to protect. But also for our staff, children and their families, as we develop our curriculum to share thoughts and ideas about what we can and should be doing.
One of our primary goals is to reduce costs, reduce consumption and reduce emissions, so we’re trying to develop a robust energy strategy. This will enable us to have a clear pathway, tailored to our needs, helping us to manage energy spend effectively, as part of a longer-term process to improve year-on-year.
The immediate steps in the process are:
- To understand and measure energy consumption.
- We’re going to involve and engage all stakeholders, including our staff and our children, each group having a powerful voice and vested interest.
- We’ll look at how to optimise the efficiency of what we have now, identifying and actioning some low-cost wins.
- Then we can look to prioritise and implement new strategies and initiatives.
- As we move through the process, we’ll review what’s been impactful and then start the process again in a circular process of continuous improvement.
There’s lots of resources available to us, but it’s easy to feel consumed by the size of the problem and confused about the best approach to take. We have some partners to work with, who can support us and help us to develop our thinking and implement our strategy.
In the beginning, we just want to take one small step.