Climate action is a subject that unites all Useful Simple Trust brands and is at the heart of our ‘Get Set Zero’ strand – one of four work areas that ensure that we exceed our clients’ needs, champion our communities and pioneer through design for our planet. In 2021, we identified carbon literacy as a key skill that all employees needed to attain to excel in their respective roles, be it designer or administrative staff. This is designed to support the Trust achieve its purpose-led mission to trailblaze within the built environment.

Carbon Literacy is defined as, “An awareness of the carbon dioxide costs and impacts of everyday activities, and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions, on an individual, community and organisational basis,” and requires at least a focused day’s worth of learning and action on climate change.

A CLO is an organisation that has been accredited by The Carbon Literacy Project as being ‘culturally Carbon Literate’; maintaining a substantial proportion of its workforce as Carbon Literate and demonstrating its Carbon Literacy through its organisational behaviour. CLO accreditation is a tiered system with Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum levels, requiring increasing levels of commitment to action on climate change and creating a low-carbon culture.

To become accredited as a Silver Carbon Literate Organisation, the Trust trained 44% of staff from across our four brands, with the remainder set to participate in Cohort 2 in early 2024. Using bespoke Carbon Literacy training materials, we co-created our organisational carbon action plan and routemap to net zero, which we are now implementing, as part of our commitment to decarbonising our business activities.

Carrie Behar, Head of Sustainability at Useful Simple Trust, commented: “We recognise that our greatest asset is our people. By investing in Carbon Literacy training and accreditation, we are empowering them to further our mission to be a force for good in the sustainable and regenerative transformation of the built environment.”

As part of the trust-wide training Leah, TM’s Creative Director, led a workshop on ‘Changing consumer behaviours’ to show the role that behaviour change can have in combatting climate change and how to use simple theories to maximise impact. The diagram on the right introduces the COM-B model which boils down behaviour (B) into three core components; capability (C), opportunity (O), and motivation (M). It proposes that to change behaviour, we need to address at least one of these components. We use this notion to help clients develop effective brand strategies that enables them to communicate with targeted audiences.

Keep up to date with our Carbon Literacy journey on our LinkedIn profile.