December’s Pledge of the Month is our final pledge for 2024, which makes it our Pledge of the Year!
The pledge comes from a Route Facilities Manager from Network Rail.
There are several reasons this one stood out as exemplary.
Firstly, the participant talks about working with suppliers to reduce scope 3 emissions. Supplier engagement is key for any organisation that is trying to decarbonise, as a huge amount of most organisations’ emissions sit within supply chains.
Reducing the amount of hardware and infrastructure being newly manufactured is essential for us to reduce emissions, as manufacturing is typically very energy intensive. It is therefore fantastic to see this Network Rail colleague’s plans to increase the reuse of existing grid supply points for renewals work.
The final part of this pledge that struck me as particularly impressive is the amount of thought that has gone into its planning. The participant has set an achievable aim of starting this work by having conversations with colleagues and contractors. He then plans to increase the ambition of the pledge in the longer-term by capturing the process in a policy statement. This approach is very smart, as it enables him to engage the relevant people with his plans first. This will then make the policy much easier to develop. Writing the planned changes into policy increases the impact of the work significantly, as the policy can be rolled out more widely across the organisation without any duplication of effort.
During all of our workshops we support out participants to develop ambitious, well-planned actions that are actually achievable and will have a meaningful impact on organisational emissions. The more planning that goes into the pledge when it is first written, the easier it is to implement and the high its potential impact.