Field Sales Solution’s CEO; Julian Cordy shares his personal views on why he is PROUD that his organisation will be carbon neutral by 2025
2019 was a year unlike many others in my lifetime, dominated by the ongoing saga of Brexit, followed by a landslide election victory for the Conservative party and then to add some Royal spice we ended the year with Mexit.
However, in amongst all this noise and political skulduggery there were two other news stories that really resonated with me and challenged me on how to deal with, on both a personal and business level, namely Climate Change and dealing with Mental Health in the workplace.
In this blog I want to focus on Climate Change and what we at Field Sales Solutions are doing about it, in the hope that others may join the journey.
Despite a few non-believers, I believe that the overwhelming scientific evidence points to a genuine crisis that needs all individuals and businesses to play their part:
- 2016 was the warmest year on record. NASA data shows that global averages in 2016 were 1.78 degrees F (0.99 degrees C) warmer than the mid-20th century average. Seventeen of the 18 warmest years have occurred since 2000.
- In May, sensors at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii – which has tracked Earth’s atmospheric concentration of CO2 since the late 1950s – detected a CO2 concentration of 415.26 ppm. The last time Earth's atmosphere contained this much CO2 was more than three million years ago, when sea levels were several metres higher and trees grew at the South Pole. Scientists have warned that carbon dioxide levels higher than 450ppm are likely to lock in catastrophic and irreversible changes in the climate. Around half of the CO2 emitted since 1750 has been in the last 40 years.
- The number of floods and heavy rains has quadrupled since 1980 and doubled since 2004. Extreme temperatures, droughts and wildfires have also more than doubled in the last 40 years. While no extreme weather event is ever down to a single cause, climate scientists are increasingly exploring the human fingerprints on floods, heatwaves, droughts and storms.
Much of this is evident from what we see and hear for ourselves, the Australian Wildfires, the flooding in Fishlake and other areas of Yorkshire. In fact, in my own village in Oxfordshire I was stranded for a day when flooding made the road unusable, something that has occurred more frequently over the 20 years I have lived here.
So, it was time to stop being an observer and time to play my part as an individual and to ensure that we have a plan to practically contribute to achieving a more sustainable business.
Business – I announced at our Christmas conference on December 19th that we have a plan and ambition to be carbon neutral by 2025.
The team here have really embraced the idea and we are already well underway to get our tree planting programme started, supporting local initiatives and donating time at charity events to help in local environmental projects.
We have formed a small working group of colleagues in the office to look at other measures we can take in the business, outside of offsetting carbon, to see what else we can do to support the environmental agenda.
Personal – I have sold my diesel car and plan to go electric but in the meantime I have taken the intermediate step of now driving a small Hybrid car. Our household has also given up eating meat during the week and trying as best we can to have a plant-based diet. We are also trying not to use plastics in the house, creating bees wax food covers instead of cling film and using local butchers and greengrocers for supplies where plastic bags are not in use.
Along with my dry January, which has now carried on into February I am feeling lighter, brighter and hoping that the small changes to my personal and business behaviour will make a difference.
After all …there’s no Planet B!
Julian Cordy, Field Sales Solutions Group CEO