Barkers are thrilled to announce that it has been awarded Silver status as a Carbon Literate Organisation from the Carbon Literacy Project, having met the requirements of the Carbon Literate Organisation standard. The accreditation demonstrates a commitment to Carbon Literacy and underlines the organisation’s dedication to maintaining a low-carbon culture.
The award follows Barkers’ success in gaining ‘Carbon Neutral’ status which was achieved in 2022 and represents a dedication by the organisation to support its employees to be mindful of their impact on the planet.
Warren Kozera, Managing Director of Barkers explains:
“At the end of 2022 the permanent team at Barkers successfully passed their Carbon Literacy training, which was an important step for us. We felt that we needed to arm our team with the knowledge that would encourage and empower them to make changes in their lives that put the planet first.
The carbon literacy training encouraged us to make changes to some of our fundamental ways of working. We now ensure that permanent team members are CLT trained within six months of joining and proactively promote this in our recruitment posts to ensure that we attract talent that share our passion and enthusiasm for protecting the planet. In addition, within each of our personal company objectives, there is a ‘Sustainability’ objective which ensures that the team maintain a proactive contribution to reducing their own carbon footprint, and that of the organisation or our clients.”
Since the training Barkers have also taken responsibility for sharing carbon messaging more widely within its network through social media, blogs, newsletters and other marketing initiatives.
In March 2023 Barkers took this a step further and held a Power of Procurement in Your Sustainability Strategy event alongside partners Coupa. With the purpose of showcasing to procurement professionals the role that they can uniquely play to procure sustainably, delegates heard from keynote speaker Stephen Henry of Positive Planet on how they can specifically target lowering their Scope 3 emissions.
As a procurement consultancy, Barkers realised that it had great potential to encourage more people within its network to consider their carbon footprint; gaining Silver status as a Carbon Literate Organisation from the Carbon Literacy Project has been an important step for Barkers says Kozera. He continues:
“We are now able to demonstrate our professional acumen surrounding carbon literacy which makes us more credible when we are encouraging clients to lower carbon emissions within their supply chains. Applying our CLO Silver status badge on our materials also represents a fantastic opportunity to start conversations with new connections and encourage them to question why thinking ‘net zero’ is so important. We are thrilled to have been acknowledged by the CLO for the work we’ve done so far and are proud of how far we have come as an organisation in such a short space of time. But there’s always more we can do and we are keen to actively advocate the Carbon Literacy Project more fully and to widen our span of influence further.”
