We're reducing our impact on the environment
By improving our ability to help the planet and the people who live on it
What's our pledge?
We, along with the rest of the world, are taking steps to reduce the impact that business has on the environment and help the planet and the people who live on it. Inspired by our purpose "to help our people, community and partners get further, faster with better ways to live, work and play", our pledge is underpinned by the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is our commitment to ongoing sustainability initiatives to help improve long term peace and prosperity for people and the planet.
Our sustainability journey
At Etch, we take sustainability seriously. Our policy wasn't created overnight - it took a systematic process of understanding the need, developing a policy, and then learning and evolving it. Watch our interview with Head of Innovation, Seth Campbell, to understand more about our journey.
Stage one:
Why do we need a policy?
Stage two:
What does our policy look like?
Stage three:
How we're evolving our policy?
What are we doing?
As part of our ongoing journey to make our business more sustainable, we have signed up to three initiatives that commit us to action:
SME Climate Hub
This commitment enables Etch to join the United Nations Race to Zero campaign, which brings together an unprecedented coalition of real economy actors and 120 governments committed to achieving net-zero emissions by no later than 2050.
Climate Neutral Now
This commitment supports Etch and other interested stakeholders to act now in order to achieve a climate-neutral world by 2030 as enshrined in the Paris Agreement. It is a tool to promote additional voluntary action on climate and to provide recognition for it.
UN Global Compact
The world's largest corporate sustainability initiative, this commitment supports the mobilisation of a global movement of sustainable companies and stakeholders to align strategies and operations with universal principles on human rights, labour, environment, anti-corruption, and action to advance societal goals.
Our commitments
Our collective commitments are aligned with those of the three initiatives. These include:
- Quantify (measure) our greenhouse gas emissions.
- Halve our greenhouse gas emissions before 2030.
- Plan and implement actions to reduce those emissions to achieve net zero emissions in our organisation by 2030 or earlier.
- Contribute to further global emission reductions and sustainable development through the use of credible carbon credits.
- Support the UN Global Compact initiative and its principles.
- Describe practical actions (i.e., disclosure of any relevant policies, procedures, or activities) that Etch has taken (or plans to undertake) to implement the UN Global Compact principles in each of the four issue areas (human rights, labour, environment, anti-corruption).
- Commit to report on yearly progress by measuring outcomes (i.e., the degree to which we met targets/performance indicators or other qualitative or quantitative measurements of results).
Developing our sustainability policy.
As part of our pledge, the most recent focus for Etch has been the development of a sustainability policy and carbon emissions reduction strategy. The first step has been to understand the impact our business has on the environment and our current contribution to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Partnering with Carbon Analytics:
- We have calculated our organisation's carbon footprint, intensity ratios and key contributing areas.
- We have set initial targets and begun planning ways to reduce our carbon footprint.
- We will report on our initiatives, measurement and reduction at least once a year.
We measure our footprint including Scopes 1, 2 and 3 (currently for our upstream supply chain) using the world's most widely used greenhouse gas account standard the GHG Protocol.
Our charitable initiative to support the UN SDGs
The Wildman Fund
IN 2020 we set up and launched our own charitable initiative, The Wildman Fund, which supports several of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Each year, Etch select three charities to support. IN addition to giving ten percent of our net profits to the charities, Etch also offers it expertise to effect change, Etch's criteria for charity selection is aligned to goals one, four and five of the UN Sustainability Goals; ending poverty, improving education, and achieving gender equality.
What's next?
Continuing the development of our sustainability policy
We will develop our sustainability policy as part of our ongoing commitment to improving sustainability by combating climate change and its impact, ending poverty, improving education, and achieving gender equality. We will continue to help improve peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.
The digital industry has a responsibility
Get in touch if you'd like to find out more about what we're doing in this space and how to leverage technology to make yourself more sustainable.