Becoming Carbon Literate Accredited
Sustainability is a core topic for the TPMS team. Not only are we passionate about how we support our property clients to put sustainability front and centre but as our business grows and develops, how we ensure we do business in the best way for the environment.
We’ve covered the subject in our Living and Learning: The Future of Home According to Gen Z research, in our Youth Forums and in also in previous webinars about sustainability and marketing.
As a small strategic marketing consultancy we want to do what we can to help reduce our carbon footprint. We plant a tree for every guest on our Property Marketing Lounge webinars via Just One Tree, we have planted 137 trees to date. These 137 trees will remove approximately 1.69 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere per year (42.2 tonnes over the next 25 years).
We’ve also recently signed the The Sustainable Marketer Manifesto by Michelle Carvill and Gemma Butler.
NET ZERO MASTERCLASS
To further our understanding of climate change, the TPMS team took part in a 2-day Net Zero Masterclass training course with Malin Cunningham of Hattrick.
The course is accredited by the Carbon Literacy Project and is developed exclusively for sales and marketing teams in the built environment and helps boost knowledge about net zero, climate change and why it matters.
We wanted to do the course to not only look at how we as individuals and a team can help reduce our carbon footprint but also how we can advise our clients on best practice and communication.
“Failing to account for climate change could lose us a competitive edge in a best-case scenario. It could mean the end of an entire business in the worst case.” – Harvard Business Review 2020.
The built environment and climate change
As a marketing consultancy who specialises in working within PBSA, co-living, BTR and PRS, it was really interesting (and worrying) to hear that the built environment makes up 40% of the UK carbon footprint and only re-uses/re-purposes 1% of materials.
The good news is that there are now professional bodies and organisations within the industry who are driving change and striving for net zero in 2050. For instance, Construct Zero from The Construction Leadership Council help drive change by sharing innovative solutions and setting transparent goals and clear actions that everyone can help to achieve.
However, there are still radical changes which need to be made and everybody in the built environment need to make their own pledges in order to make any real change.
Amongst many key stats the team learned that “Roughly 25% of people need to take a stand before large-scale social change occurs.”
What we can do as a Marketing team?
The course also taught us that as marketers, we have the power to change people’s behaviours at the scale needed – selling the vision and benefits of sustainability.
“Companies can no longer treat climate change solely as a matter of corporate responsibility or a branding opportunity.
Responding to and preparing for climate change is a fundamental business problem and those companies that do not prepare will face shareholder and stakeholder risks.” - Marketing Week, June 2022
From developing an ESG strategy to looking at specific products, your services as well as communication, the marketing team can play a pivotal role in ensuring the correct policies are in place and adhered to.
Being aware of Greenwashing and Green-hushing
Greenwashing is an environmental claim that is unsubstantiated or irrelevant. It maintains the status-quo by misleading consumers and businesses into thinking they’re behaving in a more responsible way than they are. It also means that businesses can’t be held to account potentially stalling innovation and progress.
Although ‘sustainability sells’, organisations need to make sure they are conforming to the rules set by the Government and industry organisations. For instance, those listed in The Government’s Green Claims Code.
Being honest and as transparent as possible about your practices is the best place to start. Ensuring that you’ve done the research and are continuing to learn about the topic.
In 2022, Sarah Canning, spoke about Sustainable Marketing and Greenwashing at the Global Student Living Conference. You can view her slides here, they include soundbites from our Youth Forum Focus Group where we discussed the greenwashing with students.
At the other end of the spectrum is the term green-hushing. This means when companies understate their green credentials or keep their details silent altogether. They may be doing this to stop any critique against their policies or are concerned they make face legal consequences.
Advising our clients
The course has helped us to understand further how we can advise our clients on the sustainability policies they have in place as well as how they communicate them.
If you would like some advice on your ESG strategy, what you can do as an organisation to reduce your carbon footprint or your communication – get in touch.