Case study: Green Moves Australia
Based in Melbourne, Green Moves Australia provide independent sustainability consulting services to businesses and householders. Pushed by their dedication to high quality services, Green Moves Australia is committed to providing practical solutions to living and working in an efficient and sustainable manner. A certified carbon neutral business as of 2021, find out how Green Moves Australia achieved this climate milestone, and the next steps in their journey, from the case study below.
Tell us how you got to this milestone.
We started our B Corp and carbon neutral journey back in 2014 becoming a Certified B Corporation in 2015 and certified carbon neutral in 2021.
Being a small family business focused on sustainability and energy efficiency, we have continually worked on improving our own environmental footprint and helping others to do the same. It's important that we 'walk the talk' and have that independently validated to build credibility in our business.
We were one of the first to declare a Climate and Biodiversity Emergency on our website as we didn't quite fit the existing industry 'Declare' sites. However, we supported and signed the Builders Declare declaration as it is relevant to our core business, buildings (residential and commercial) and businesses in 2020.
We set out our climate action plan and carbon neutral targets in 2019 and since have measured our carbon footprint for scopes 1, 2 and 3. We have set carbon reduction strategies and became a Climate Active Certified carbon neutral organisation in 2021. Our next steps are being finalised and we aim to be Climate Positive by 2022.
What were the easy wins?
Changing to green power and carbon neutral gas.
What were the barriers, and how have you worked to overcome them?
Time was our main barrier. Simply finding the time to do things in a small business is very challenging. Setting a small amount of time aside a week significantly helped to progress our goals in this area. Upgrading vehicle to EVs from Hybrid is our next challenge. Barriers are cost and infrastructure. Government proposed taxes are also a disincentive.
What’s the next step for Green Moves Australia?
We are currently reviewing science based targets and looking into anything else we may have missed that we could be doing. We are also checking science based relevant targets that we should and could align to. From January 2022 we will be actively reviewing electric vehicles and identify costs to determine if transitioning to an EV is possible this financial year.
What are your climate priorities in the next 5 years?
● Maintaining Climate Active Carbon Neutral certification
● Transitioning to electric vehicle for business
● Becoming Climate Positive - certified if possible
What do you want to achieve by 2030?
Carbon/Climate Positive and the most minimal impact on the environment possible. Helping others to do the same.
When running a small business owners and key staff tend to have to do everything from sales to accounting to IT as well as doing the business of the business, what ever that is.
It's not easy to to find the time to do everything in a timely manner. We find time management challenging but are very motivated to walk the talk and share learnings.
We found that by blocking out just 1 hour a week for internal sustainability progression worked wonders. Keep at it and you'll get there. It's a journey that is absolutely worth the effort, and a must if we are to keep our climate within habitable boundaries to sustain a quality of life for future generations of all species.