Through the first 6 weeks of 2019, eight B Corps took part in our Pledge Challenge, battling to see who’s employees could make – and complete – the most pledges. Pledges to do things like donating unwanted clothes to charity, wasting less food, or taking shorter showers.
All small actions that together add up to make a big difference, for our own health and that of our planet.
We reported some stats about the pledged impact in February, and now that most pledges have come to an end, we are back with a summary of the confirmed impact.
Each pledge is to try an action out for two months; when that two months finishes, we ask users to report on how they got on (49% of users responded). From that data, as well as a deeper impact survey that they have the option of filling out at the end, we compiled the following data…
1. Staff at Leap Design completed the most pledges per person.
Congrats team – you smashed it again!
A special mention should also be given to Innocent drinks, who confirmed savings of a whopping 10,609 kg carbon.
2. Overall success:
Together, 1390 were made by staff of 8 B Corps. 47% were successful, and 48% will be continued beyond their two months.
3. Annual impact
Using those results, we extrapolate to calculate the annual carbon, water, and waste savings of each individual pledge – and the cumulative impact. The annual impact created by B Corp staff’s simple actions adds up to 86.5 tonnes of carbon, or…
As well as 2.1 million litres of water and 42 tonnes of waste.
4. Most successful pledges:
Ignoring those that had too few pledges to be statistically significant, the actions with highest success rates were:
- Lift share – to share unavoidable journeys.
- Smart drive – to drive more efficiently
- Feed the earth – to compost food waste
5. Most challenging pledges:
We can also learn a lot from looking at what went wrong… so we picked out which actions had the lowest success rate:
- PC Power – Adjust your computer power
- On yer bike – to cycle to your destination
- Run in – to run to your destination
January and February are pretty grim months to start cycling or running, so perhaps that shouldn’t be so surprising. And for PC Power, it may be that the company computers have power settings controlled by IT, taking that action out of individual’s hands.
6. Action for the Global Goals:
Using our matrix of Do Actions vs the Sustainable Development Goals, we mapped out which of the SDGs we had the biggest impact against. As you can see from the graph below, most action was taken against SDG 12 (Responsible consumption and production), 13 (Climate action), and 3 (Good health and wellbeing).
7. Building Pride:
Of the survey respondents, 86% said they were more proud of their organisation now, thanks to its efforts around sustainability.
8. Communities of action:
71% of respondents said they felt part of a community making a difference together
9. Saving time:
People often fear that a programme like this takes too much time. But in fact, 71% of our users said that their pledge had helped them to save time. So it really is a win-win-win.
Most importantly of all, the pledges are already beginning to lead to wider ripples of action and change right across Europe. For many people, their pledges are the first step on a far longer journey of climate action, inspiring them to make more fundamental changes both at work and at home. Unlocking those bigger changes is where we believe we can have our biggest impact, although that so much harder to measure than the individual pledges themselves.
We’d love to help more B Corps start this journey – if you’d like to run a pledge challenge with your colleagues, just head this way.
Do Nation blog 