An Overview Of Our Solution
The Planet Mark™ is an internationally-renowned and trusted sustainability certification programme recognising commitment to continuous improvement in sustainability.
Our mission is to empower organisations to make year-on-year progress in sustainability. Our approach is to ensure businesses grow economically by improving their environmental and social performance. The Planet Mark™ holders individual and cumulative impacts range from reducing carbon, energy, water and waste to supporting the Eden Project's environmental education programmes and protecting endangered rainforest with Cool Earth.
Holders of The Planet Mark™ deliver results that go beyond compliance, reaching new levels of sustainability and engaging employees in the process. Together we are proving that sustainability is good for business and that acting responsibly is the new norm.
- Population Impacted: 1,017,226 individuals (2017 only)
- Continent: Europe
Last name
Organization type
Context Analysis
The consequences for surpassing the planet’s ecological limits are profound. With heatwaves from the UK to the Middle East continuing unabated, the effects of climate change are making themselves increasingly well known. However, the transformation to a zero-carbon way of living is challenging and as evidenced by this year’s Earth Overshoot Date is not always smooth.
Climate change has a lot of scientific evidence that is often too academic for the average business owner or employee to understand, let alone attempt to remedy. As a result, a growing number of individuals and organisations are left with an unfulfilled desire to play a greater role. The Planet Mark™ helps these businesses, developers, and property managers evolve from advocacy to activism, embedding a sense of responsibly among stakeholders and communicating their sustainability achievements with clarity and meaning.
Describe the technical solution you wanted the target audience to adopt
Climate action is a part of the global agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals. It is also a goal on which everyone has an impact – and can therefore take action, no matter how small. As the famous management adage goes; you can’t manage what you can’t measure. The Planet Mark™ provides assurance that an organisation is addressing its corporate sustainability impact meaningfully. Certification is easy and can take as little as two weeks, even for an organisations first year's accreditation. All prospective holders need to do is commit to reducing carbon emissions by at least 2.5% over a 12 month period and provide us with is six months' worth of energy data.
The programme builds employee and stakeholder engagement and creates positive environmental and social change. Uniquely, it develops knowledge and communication skills so as to embed sustainability within organisations.
Type of intervention
Describe your behavioral intervention
The majority of UK adults (64%) now believe that human activities are contributing to global warming – a consensus held by 97% of climate scientists for some time now. Yet the prospect of adopting a climate change agenda remains a complex proposition that is just as likely to trigger an emotional response as it is to lead to reasoned argument.
The business case for sustainability is underpinned by several key arguments. Pro environmental practices improve brand and reputation, strengthen stakeholder relations and improve employee morale. These factors back up the idea that the three facets of the famous "triple bottom line" – people, profit, and planet – hold no inherent contradiction. Unfortunately, in the eyes of many the interests of profit blatantly conflict with the interests of people and planet.
As needed, please explain the type of intervention in more detail
We wanted to create a brand that would at the very least talk to people and ideally encourage them that a sustainable business decision is a smart business decision. To do that, we had to position sustainability as something which is achievable, easy to do and aspirational.
Describe your implementation
The aim of the Planet Mark™ Certification Programme is to ensure every organisation grows economically by improving its environmental and social performance. Through rigorous carbon footprint measurement and reporting, The Planet Mark™ provides assurance that an organisation is addressing its corporate sustainability impact meaningfully.
Our 3-step process is as simple as 1, 2, 3: Step one is to measure a prospective holders carbon footprint and environmental performance. Businesses are required to report their 'direct' Scope 1 and 2 emissions (measurement frameworks set out by WRI/WBCSD GHG Protocol), relating to electricity and fuel use in buildings and owned vehicles. We encourage them to report on 'indirect' Scope 3 emissions too, such as water, waste, business travel and other procured goods and services. If businesses already have a carbon footprint, we provide a full verification service. For each year of certification holders receive a comprehensive Certification Report detailing the progress made in reducing their carbon footprint. This includes changes from the base year, breakdown by activity and reporting locations and recommendations for improvement.
The second stage is engaging stakeholders: Certified businesses have exclusive access to the Client Login area of our website. At the click of a button they are able to access all of the documents needed for certification and toolkits to help improve their carbon footprint. In addition businesses are offered the chance to run a sustainability workshop at which their employees are invited to learn about the benefits of sustainability and how then can contribute to reducing their overall carbon footprint.
The final stage is communication: Planet Mark Holders are provided with a range of bespoke digital stickers, posters and marketing materials to communicate their achievements. All clients are also provided with a certificate presentation to aid in the creation of bespoke press releases.
External connections
The Planet Mark™ is partnered with Cool Earth, the award-winning global charity that works alongside indigenous villages to halt rainforest destruction. Alongside every new business certification, The Planet Mark™ protects an acre of rainforest through Cool Earth. The ‘Acre of Rainforest’ pledge goes directly towards supporting the Asháninka community in Central Peru, whose livelihoods depend on the Amazon rainforest remaining standing.The Asháninka is Peru’s largest indigenous nation. Their territory is at extreme risk from illegal logging and coca trafficking. Cool Earth is working with 16 villages to form a protective shield for the adjacent National Park, making millions of acres of neighbouring forest inaccessible to loggers.
The impact of a Planet Mark™ certified organisation protecting An Acre of Rainforest is extensive: 240 trees protected, thousands of species sheltered, 76,000 litres of water produced and 260 tonnes of CO2 stored.
The Planet Mark™ is also partnered with the Eden Project, an educational charity and an award-winning international visitor destination and centre for education in sustainability and innovation. Every business certification awarded through The Planet Mark™ programme contributes 5% of the fee to the Eden Project. In addition, each certification comes with 12 free tickets to Eden Project, encouraging organisations to learn more about climate change and the importance of biodiversity.
Who adopted the desired behaviors and to what degree?
In the 2017 reporting period, The Planet Mark™ was awarded to 78 businesses, new developments, properties and schools internationally. A sample set of 55 holders of The Planet Mark™ benefited from the following in the aforementioned period:
A 12% average reduction in total carbon per employee, over 1,017,000 stakeholders engaged and over 14,600 tCO2e total carbon saved.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
Through our long-standing partnership with Cool Earth The Planet Mark™ is able to offer organisations that are looking to certify their new developments the opportunity to mitigate 110% of a buildings embodied carbon through avoided deforestation.
In addition, The Planet Mark™ protects an Acre of Rainforest for every new Business Certificate it delivers.
To date The Planet Mark™ has helped lock in over 2.5 million tonnes of CO2, this way, thereby securing the long-term future of the world’s most precious forest.
What were some of the resulting co-benefits?
By achieving The Planet Mark™ organisations can directly and measurably contribute to 7 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. To help businesses assess their impact, The Planet Mark™ has developed a diagnostic table to gauge contributions to the SDGs and to illustrate the international influence of holders commitments to sustainability.
Additionally, toolkits provide advice and resources to support certified businesses towards achieving their carbon reduction target. These resources are accessible through The Planet Mark™ website and include assets such as guides on plastic, water, waste and carbon.
In 2017 alone, we have directly influenced 1,017,226 individuals as to the importance of sustainability. This does not include our reach via media such as radio, TV, newspaper, social media and regular contributions to sustainability news outlets such as Edie.net
Sustainability
The Planet Mark™ is a market-based solution that provides annually re-occurring revenue, successful in delivering both business value and environmental performance. As a result, we benefit from a 92% retention rate.
The business has grown organically, without the need of investment, however to scale and grow more rapidly and thereby deliver greater carbon savings we would welcome some funding to help us accelerate.
Return on investment
Fee structure is designed to be affordable and deliver a return on investment for each customer in less than 12 months, delivered through cost savings associated with resource efficiency and carbon saving. Typically, organisations achieve between £50 – £150 cost savings per employee per annum.
It should be noted that carbon savings are maintained annually and are primarily achieved through employee engagement and behavior change. The Planet Mark™ is well placed to unlock the skills knowledge and passion of employees and companies to make change happen.
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
The Planet Mark™ is built upon the internationally recognized World Resources Institute Greenhouse Gas Protocol and has been designed to provide a worldwide mark of sustainability. Our measuring platform is built on Salesforce which provides total scalability.
We would benefit from funding into the marketing of the Planet Mark in target sectors and regions to promote both the brand and its effectiveness in driving down carbon emissions. Funding would also support the development of the existing Planet Mark Associates Programme, which enables sustainability consultants and experts to offer the Planet Mark to their customer base and generate revenue as a result. This would include a suite of materials and online training.