The team at Social Enterprise Mark CIC hold themselves and their organisation to a high standard when it comes to practicing what they preach. As an award-winning international social enterprise accreditation body, they provide clear standards for the social enterprise sector, defining what it means to be a genuine social enterprise.
Being a Social Enterprise themselves they not only ensure they meet their own standards, they have also committed to meeting a number of standards & accreditations around equality, wellbeing and transparency.
Not satisfied with the number of awards, accolades & certificates already gained, they wanted to address their environmental impact and decided to start their Green Journey with 1000 Green Businesses.
Their Green Journey
After an engaging and enjoyable consultancy session with Rachel & Sophie, the team set out taking action & making changes to have a positive impact. Starting with some small ‘easy wins’ that each of their team could do (despite remote working), we then set out to identify where we could have the greatest impact.
What they discovered was that they were actually already doing lots of great things within their organisation and that the way for them to create a larger impact was to look outwards and influence a greater positive environmental impact within their Mark Holders & wider network.
On an internal level they also identified an opportunity to substantially reduce or remove their packaging and postage processes for their physical Welcome Packs.
Lucy and Rachel at the Social Enterprise Mark CIC stand
As an infrastructure organisation for the social enterprise sector that offers accreditation services which includes the reporting of social impact, we believe our greatest impact will be through our abilities to influence the network around us, whilst using ourselves as an example of how this can be achieved.
Now the goals were set, it was time to get practical, breaking down the goals into manageable steps and setting measurable and accountable sub goals and deadlines to make sure they don’t get bumped to the bottom of the to-do list.
With these in place we building sustainability & environmental considerations into the brand & their organisational processes with Rachel and Sophie taking on the role of Environmental Champions.
Finally we considered how to further involve their customers, partners & network and use their brand as a voice to have a positive impact on the issues & causes that matter to them.
What did we achieve?
Just by taking the ‘easy-win’ actions in the first week of the Green Journey the team will save 6411.67Kg of CO2 per Year!
That’s equivalent to 15,910 miles driven by an average passenger vehicle or 817,695 smartphone charges.
Social Enterprise Mark CIC is now encouraging and promoting good environmental business practices to its Mark Holder community and their wider international social enterprise network.
They are achieving this by promoting their own actions and practices, sharing the benefits of becoming more environmentally friendly and encouraging their network to review their ‘green’ practices and start their own Green Journey.
Their Welcome Packs will be reviewed with their customers in the new year with a look to switch to digital versions to reduce the physical materials, packaging & postage.
The team now has the knowledge and skills plus the tools and frameworks to continue to make further positive environmental changes and the processes to implement them successfully.
For these actions and fully engaging in the Green Journey with an open curiosity to discover where they could have an impact Social Enterprise Mark CIC were awarded the 1,000 Green Businesses Badge to add to their collection of accreditations.
What have we both got to say?
We found the ‘1000 Green Businesses’ consultation service very useful, the process enabled us to reflect on our current environmental practices and the support from Tim helped us identify areas that we could further improve on.
Tim was very dedicated to helping us set out a plan to become more green and I would highly recommend more social enterprises take part in this service and start their own green journeys! The process was simple to follow and rewarding for the whole team and the company.
Rachel Fell, Business Development Manager, Social Enterprise Mark CIC
It was fantastic to work with Rachel, Sophie and the Social Enterprise Mark CIC team and see their commitment to discovering and implementing positive changes and practicing what they preach in setting the bar for how good a social enterprise can be.
I look forward to seeing their progress and impact grow as they bring their Mark Holders and community along with them on their Green Journey.
The Social Enterprise Mark CIC Team
