Sheffield Futures are delighted with the news that we have successfully renewed our Green Mark Level 1 accreditation! Green Mark provides an internationally recognised environmental certification for organisations that want to assure their clients and employees that they are operating to recognised environmental standards. As a young people’s charity, we want to know that we’re playing our part in providing a clean, green future for the next generation.
About the process:
To achieve accreditation, we submitted information about our policies and practices and provided evidence of the progress we have made over the past year; this was then reviewed by a Green Mark auditor.
The Green Mark process has helped us create a framework to make sure we have the correct tools to monitor and reduce our emissions going forward, as well as communicating internally and externally how we are doing this. After becoming certified, Green Mark sent us a certificate, window stickers and some digital materials to share the news of our accreditation.
Here are some of our environmental policies:
- Continuously improve the environmental performance and integrate recognised environmental management best practice into our operations.
- Measure and take action to reduce the carbon footprint of our activities by setting progressive environmental objectives & targets.
- Reduce waste and increase recycling at Star House and when working from home i.e. paper, plastics, toner cartridges.
- Ensure all staff have an awareness of environmental management and through our training programmes ensure environmental leadership throughout our business.
For any other organisations considering environmental accreditation, these are some reasons why we would recommend it:
- Sustainable practices such as saving energy, reducing water use, using less materials and creating less waste can save more money than you think.
- Evidence of environmental credentials can help with securing funding and increases the likelihood of other organisations wanting to work with you.
- It is possible to run a charitable organisation without compromising on social and environmental responsibilities.
- Accreditation can also help to engage stakeholders and communicate your sustainability achievements to the world.