Thoughts from an Intern

By Johanne Kloster, CPH Business Academy

 

At the SBP office I’ve felt highly encouraged to insist more and more on sustainable behavior, such as saving energy, saving water, walking and using public transportation. Also, especially to start having more conversations with people about climate change, and solutions and resources available.

The way SBP work to advance sustainability practices and energy efficiency for businesses, through supporting and providing engaging workshops on the matter, sits very well with my own environmental values.

I find it very meaningful and important how SBP has created a supportive network around tackling and sharing sustainability challenges. It’s definitely in alignment with my own belief of the need to collaborate around the vast climate issues we’re facing.

It’s been reassuring to experience how various organisations contact SBP for resources and enquiries for facilitating workshops, educating staff on sustainable practices. For me this is what it comes down to, to help each other educate ourselves on the climate impacts of our habits, small as well as big.

If we’re not informed, how can we make better, more sustainable choices?

I think SBP does a great job in that regard, by keeping all the businesses they engage with informed and up to date through their newsletter, webpage and events.

I’ve had the opportunity to handle SBPs marketing and social media, in particular their twitter profile. I’ve drafted their monthly newsletter, done social media stats and overall getting familiar with how a business can reach out and engage with clients through communication on different platforms. Communication as a business strategy is something that I’ve found essential during my studies, having had communication courses and projects.

I’ve been able to learn in more details what it means to work with carbon footprint and calculations within a business. Getting familiar with how SBP themselves operate on the basis of a carbon savings target they have to hit, has broadened my understanding of this extensive tool. It has given me a better grip of the somewhat abstract idea of emitted tonnes of carbon – to be able to compare amounts, break them down in terms of activity or measure undertaken, and put into equivalencies. This has connected well to a course during my study, about legislation and scope 1,2,3 reporting for businesses.

Engaging with SBP staff and learning from their experience and knowledge about various sustainability practices and networking around this, has significantly reassured me that working in the environmental sector is the only meaningful thing for me.

SBP has put me on track to figure out that I want to continue working with helping SMEs and corporations in general, to transition to renewables and to sustainable operations of their activities overall. Realising more profoundly how we are in the midst of a climate and ecological emergency, through discussing current political actions being taken (or the lack thereof) both in the UK and worldwide, makes everything else seem less significant. It takes all businesses to come along to achieve a net zero future. I’d like to delve more into carbon reporting and value chains in this regard.