Sustainability

We began the process of creating our sustainability strategy as a team, in April 2024. We wanted to ensure it became a central pillar of our thinking as our business evolves. Our strategy involves the consistent use of environmentally friendly materials, responsible sourcing, better estimations to allow more accurate material purchasing, reduction of waste, increasing recycling and reuse as well as a more joined-up plan for sustainable travel and community engagement.

Our sustainable vision

To design, build and maintain sustainable, fun, safe and adventurous places that inspire the next generation to value and protect our planet.

The four commitments

– We are committed to reaching Net Zero by 2040, with some significant interim steps to get us there.

– We will better understand our materials and construction practices and work with our suppliers to identify and utilise more sustainable materials.

– We shall minimise our environmental impact across all operations through smart design, more joined-up travel planning and reducing or removing the carbon impact of our travel wherever possible.

– We will work hard on our community engagement and social impacts to leave the areas we work in, slightly better than when we arrived.

Net Zero by 2040

We have committed to reach net Zero by 2040 if not before. To some, this sounds like years away and obviously too easy. We could take the simple route, change nothing and just pay our carbon offset penance.

But that isn’t our way and it never will be.

So, we have chosen to do it the hard and honest way.

By working our way through every one of our carbon outputs and trying to find ways to reduce them. We had already made some small steps by switching to 100% renewable energy in our workshop unit. We’d also agreed to invest in new AV equipment to make it far easier for those who live away to join board meetings and other important get-togethers remotely. This alone we estimate will save some serious CO2 tonnage. But we DO still have to make site visits and somehow we have to find ways of reducing their CO2 impact.

And there will be many more small steps to take.  We will aim to work with our suppliers, our clients and our team to look for incremental improvements and the occasional huge leap forward.

A pragmatic approach

1. Flights are an essential evil
Our work takes us around the world and we have to visit sites before we begin design. Following on from this, our teams will be on site to complete the installation of the structures we create.

We are splanning better and working hard to reduce the number of flights and how well we can source skilled labour locally. However, we are at the mercy of the airlines to make many of the huge strides required for us. Part of our reaching Net Zero will be dependent on them and what they achieve. This is somewhat out of our control.

2. Getting to site with electric vehicles
At present, with the electric commercial vehicles available in the UK market, they are impractical for our site teams. We are often towing a trailer and this means that the already limited range can be reduced to as low as 80-100 miles. Also, charging speeds on commercial vehicles tend to be poor, which means a long trip would take over twice as long as it does currently.

Rivian is coming to the UK and Kia have announced their first electric commercial vehicle range, so we will keep watching and listening and begin the switch as soon as practical.

In the meantime, we need to work smarter with our site times to reduce the overall site miles and how many of the team can travel together.

3. Working together
Our first stage is to achieve a ‘carbon cost per job’ so we can then potentially work with our clients directly to offset on the site we are working at (or inset as it is now being called)

This is a far more usable measure for us and would seem more ‘real’ to try and offset each job where we can work directly with the client and look at ways to inset on site as we are working there. We are talking with Adam Henson’s Cotswold Farm Park, to explore a number of ways they work under the Sustainable Farm Incentive and how we can get involved.

We genuinely want to minimise our impact, but we have to approach the issue with a level of honesty, pragmatism and innovation to reduce our ongoing impact as we move closer to our target date for Net Zero of 2040.

We will report our progress on this page.

Baseline Carbon Summary

As you can see here, these reports hide a multitude of sins, but it is already apparent that our biggest issue is our supply chain, the materials we build with and our travel.

Energy Emissions Breakdown 2023

As above, Scope Three is where the work is needed. We have made some progress on this already and briefed it through the team.

Working closely with Suppliers

We have implemented changes to enable us to reach net zero by 2040 and make some chunky incremental improvements in the meantime too.  Our first steps have included the following changes to processes or policies.

Supplier Code of Conduct

We want to ensure that the companies we work with are genuine partners that we trust and whose business aligns with our values. You can see that here.

Sustainable Procurement Policy

This shows how we approach buying and what we’re looking for in a supply partner. You can read that here.

Sustainability Policy

This details our overall Sustainability Policy, which will be regularly updated. You can read that here.