Introduction

Climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and unsustainable resource use pose serious challenges for all organisations and individuals. We acknowledge that our activities have an environmental impact and we seek to follow a simple hierarchy of action:

1. Avoid emissions wherever possible
2. Reduce emissions in areas we control
3. Offset any remaining emissions responsibly

Commitments

Our environmental commitments focus on five priority areas – energy use, waste and materials, travel, procurement, and awareness & influence – where we can have a positive environmental impact. This approach takes into account inherent factors in our operating model, most notably:

• As a think tank and consultancy for the social sector, our services provide knowledge and advice with a lower environmental impact than in other sectors.
• As tenants in a shared building, we have limited influence over large-scale building systems like heating or water supply, but we do have control over the decisions made in our own space.

1. Energy use

Avoid unnecessary energy use and reduce the environmental impact by:

• Switching off devices and lights when not in use.
• Providing information and advice to staff on how to optimise heating and cooling settings.
• Offsetting our carbon emissions.

2. Waste

Avoid unnecessary waste and reduce the environmental impact by:

• Encouraging staff to limit printing. Use digital documentation whenever possible, and when printing is essential, use recycled paper and double-sided printing by default.
• Providing recycling systems for paper, plastic, glass and food waste.
• Recycling or refurbishing IT and other office equipment.
• Providing glasses, mugs, crockery and cutlery rather than disposable plastic cups.
• Offsetting our estimated carbon emissions.

3. Travel

Avoid unnecessary travel and reduce the environmental impact by:

• Encouraging staff to commute by walking, cycling or public transport, supported by our bicycle and season ticket loan schemes.
• Investing in technology, including video and remote collaboration tools to minimise work-related travel.
• Avoiding air travel wherever possible, encouraging the use of rail or other lower carbon alternatives for UK and nearby European destinations.
• Offsetting our carbon emissions.

4. Procurement

Avoid unnecessary purchases and reduce the environmental impact by:

• Encouraging staff to avoid unnecessary purchases.
• Choosing environmentally-friendly products and services that reduce resource use, such as recycled office paper and asking our cleaners to use eco-friendly cleaning products.
• Sourcing supplies and services locally when possible to reduce delivery and transportation.

5. Awareness and influence

Foster a culture of environmental awareness internally and externally by:

• Communicating our environmental policy to all employees (including as part of new staff induction), sharing our annual carbon emissions report and encouraging suggestions for greener practices.
• Integrating environmental thinking into our projects and partnerships wherever relevant, for example, through initiatives like our Everyone’s Environment programme, an alliance of social purpose and environmental groups acting together with communities experiencing inequalities to promote the benefits of including everyone in climate and nature decisions as a route to better health, warm homes, good jobs, lower bills and access to nature for all.

Reporting and continuous improvement

We seek to be transparent in our reporting by:

• Estimating our carbon emissions based on guidance set out in the Carbon Neutral Protocol.
• Reporting our estimated carbon emissions in our annual report, published on our website.
• Offsetting our estimated carbon emissions by purchasing carbon credits.

We periodically revisit our targets and practices to ensure they remain appropriate, updating this policy and the associated management plan as needed.

Carbon management plan

Baseline carbon footprint

NPC’s baseline year for carbon reporting is 2025. In that year, our estimated carbon emissions were 47.18 tCO₂e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent). This is relatively small in absolute terms, reflecting NPC’s size and activities. The major sources of our emissions in 2025 were homeworking (56%), office energy and waste (40%) and travel (4%).

NPC has set pragmatic targets in key areas we can influence at the same time as maintaining the existing activities set out in our policy.

Priority area	End of 2028 target	Activities to achieve target
Energy use	Absolute reduction of 5% on our baseline	Encouraging positive staff behaviour around switching off devices and lights when not in use and optimising office heating and cooling settings. Evaluating potential for 100% renewable electricity (subject to decisions around an office move).
Waste	Maintain recycling rate ≥90%	Encouraging positive staff behaviour and use of office recycling facilities. Building responsible disposal /recycling into any office move plan (if appropriate).
Travel	Fully offset	Evaluate the feasibility of adding staff commutes to our data set for carbon offsetting.
	Air is <20% of total business travel emissions	Investigate the feasibility of mandating pre-approval for air travel. Investigate the feasibility of highlighting carbon emissions and recharging carbon credits to clients who require air travel.
Awareness & influence	Funding secured beyond current programme.	Develop proposals for discussion with existing and potential funders for future funding for Everyone’s Environment.
Other		Evaluate cost-benefit of specialist support to review and refine methodology and datasets use to estimate carbon emissions (subject to budget availability).