SIRA - turning sustainability into reality
The move to a more sustainable, low carbon economy is bound to lead to major social and environmental shifts affecting governments, businesses and individuals worldwide. These shifts will pose questions but also offer major opportunities to organisations.
The key forces at work in the drive towards a low carbon economy are Risk, Responsibility, Regulation and Reward.
Measuring Performance
There are a number of different sustainability and environmental standards – the UN Global Compact, the ISO 14000 series and the World Resources Institute are just some of them. Broadest in scope is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), used by 700 of the largest international organisations.There are 79 performance indicators.
The Sustainability Journey
Clearly, no organisation will be able to change overnight to one where sustainability lies at the heart of its operations.Once you know where you are, you can plan how to get where you want to be by introducing initiatives to reduce environmental impact, increasing sustainability in services and products and extending the positive effects on communities, staff and customers. Tracking and measuring progress and highlighting additional areas for improvement are key to ensuring the process runs efficiently.
Taking The First Steps:
Sustainability Indicator Reporting Application (SIRA)
We designed SIRA to provide building blocks, which can be scaled as your organisation evolves to report on a wider range of sustainability issues or as legislative reporting requirements become more complex. Feeds can pull data from existing reporting tools or you can enter information manually.
A key feature of SIRA is the flexibility of its underlying data management system. Using awardwinning technology from UK market leader Kalido, the SIRA platform allows easy integration and management of emissions data, regardless of their source or format. Kalido’s technology also ensures that data is remembered, so even if reporting formats change, all changes are tracked. This powerful foundation creates a robust audit trail.
Our Journey - And Our Achievement
The results so far are encouraging, exceeding our 2010 emissions reduction targets two years earlier than expected. Since 2006, we have cut:
- Carbon emissions by 23 per cent
- Electricity use by 13 per cent
- Business air travel by 49 per cent
- Business road travel by 26 per cent
- Office waste to landfill by 64 per cent
- Paper use by 34 per cent
Teleconferencing has more than doubled – helping to cut travel spending by £7 million in less than two years, while avoiding spending another £5 million. Switching to greener energy supplies has saved more than £3 million.
