No More Greenwash - Setting a New Standard
David Thorpe, February 2021
The One Planet Centre CIC and Assessment Services Ltd proudly launched the new One Planet Standard on 28th September 2021 in collaboration with the Good Governance Institute at the Festival of Good Governance. Swansea Council have announced that they will be the first to pilot the new scheme.
With COP26 just six weeks away and the knowledge that the world is consuming at least twice as much as the planet can sustain, many organisations are saying ‘we know we should be doing something – but we don’t really know where to start.’ The One Planet Standard incentivises companies to commit to reducing their ecological footprint and helps them create a road map towards net zero with the necessary targets and metrics to keep them on their journey. They will develop a culture of continuous improvement, moving through bronze, silver and gold levels as they reach their targets.
The formal launch of the One Planet Standard featured Joan Whalley, former chair of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee and was chaired by Jane Davidson, the architect of the Well-being of Future Generations Act in Wales, who says: “this is an impressive tool to help people be confident in their emission reduction”.
The One Planet Standard is supported by the Welsh Future Generations Commissioner, Sophie Howe, and many of the top environmentalists in Wales, a nation recognised as a world leader in this field. Sophie Howe says: “The Standard aligns and builds on my existing advice in the area of decarbonisation and enhancing nature resilience, and it can help not only the public sector but all organisations in Wales with practical actions towards meeting carbon emission and biodiversity targets.
“The Standard centres around the 5 ways of working and promotes long-term thinking; it is an easy-to-understand and useful tool that can help address the climate and nature emergencies, prevent the disaster we are currently heading towards and help ensure the well-being of our future generations and the planet.”
The Standard’s developer, The One Planet Centre CIC’s founder-director, David Thorpe, says “This is the culmination of years of development. The One Planet Standard will help organisations of all types combat climate change and re-introduce more biodiversity and nature into our environment, by adjusting the complete impacts of their activities – their estate, products, services, and operations. “We already have the answers to environmental and social problems, they are just not applied systematically. So we offer a compendium of solutions, metrics and indicators that support management to implement the Standard.”
Assessment Services Ltd.’s CEO Paul Bridle says, “We’re delighted to be supporting the One Planet Centre with their aims to create a better planet. Independent assessment will help organisations wishing to ensure they play their part in securing the future of our planet in a practical way by providing trust and confidence.”
Jaco Marais, GGI Partner, says: “Organisations being responsible to the people they serve and the planet is at the core of good governance. The Good Governance Institute is proud to be part of this key launch, focused on helping public, third and private sector organisations find a path to excellent environmental behaviours.”
Councillor Andrea Lewis, Deputy Leader of Swansea Council, on agreeing to pilot the Standard said, "I’m confident that we can reach bronze accreditation. The plan is to take the cabinet report to November, not just to outline the climate and nature emergency plan that we have but also to formally commit to adopting the standard, fully engaging with [the Centre] and we really look forward to piloting it and championing it for other local authorities to take part as well."
She continued: "It's important to have measurable standards and an independent set of eyes making sure that we don’t have gaps in things that we should be focusing on. We’ve made a commitment to reach net-zero as a council by 2030. We hope that across the city of Swansea we reach net zero by 2050. But this is about changing behaviours, winning hearts and minds, bringing businesses, bringing the public along with us and of course engaging our staff."
Downloading the Standard is free. For more information visit: https://oneplanetstandard.org/.
A self-assessment tool is available, and organisations can receive support, and opt to use toolkits, training and capacity-building from The One Planet Centre. Goals that organisations can set will involve greater efficiency, reducing raw materials use, tackling the lifecycle ecological footprint, cutting energy use and pollution, and reversing the damage to nature. Social and ecological value can be captured by adding relevant criteria to the National Social Value Portal tool for procurement contracts and linking them to the Well-Being Act (Wales) and Sustainable Development Goal indicators. The end goal would be for all expenditure to, besides achieving its primary business aim, improve the future security of humanity and the natural environment; i.e., to use economic power to do only good.
Understanding the requirements of the One Planet Standard will help senior leaders shape strategic direction, help leaders and managers implement change, help staff shift the corporate culture, help customers, suppliers and service contractors manage product and service life cycles, and contribute to partnership working. The One Planet Standard supports continuous improvement, with a Plan > Do > Check > Act virtuous circle loop. Organisations set a timeline, with milestones, to reach a one planet footprint using measurement and verification tools.
The graph below shows the extent of humanity’s ecological deficit. It is over fifty years since we operated within the limits of what the planet can support. This is why every organisation needs to contribute to the urgent effort to reverse this trend:
With COP26 just six weeks away and the knowledge that the world is consuming at least twice as much as the planet can sustain, many organisations are saying ‘we know we should be doing something – but we don’t really know where to start.’ The One Planet Standard incentivises companies to commit to reducing their ecological footprint and helps them create a road map towards net zero with the necessary targets and metrics to keep them on their journey. They will develop a culture of continuous improvement, moving through bronze, silver and gold levels as they reach their targets.
The formal launch of the One Planet Standard featured Joan Whalley, former chair of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee and was chaired by Jane Davidson, the architect of the Well-being of Future Generations Act in Wales, who says: “this is an impressive tool to help people be confident in their emission reduction”.
The One Planet Standard is supported by the Welsh Future Generations Commissioner, Sophie Howe, and many of the top environmentalists in Wales, a nation recognised as a world leader in this field. Sophie Howe says: “The Standard aligns and builds on my existing advice in the area of decarbonisation and enhancing nature resilience, and it can help not only the public sector but all organisations in Wales with practical actions towards meeting carbon emission and biodiversity targets.
“The Standard centres around the 5 ways of working and promotes long-term thinking; it is an easy-to-understand and useful tool that can help address the climate and nature emergencies, prevent the disaster we are currently heading towards and help ensure the well-being of our future generations and the planet.”
The Standard’s developer, The One Planet Centre CIC’s founder-director, David Thorpe, says “This is the culmination of years of development. The One Planet Standard will help organisations of all types combat climate change and re-introduce more biodiversity and nature into our environment, by adjusting the complete impacts of their activities – their estate, products, services, and operations. “We already have the answers to environmental and social problems, they are just not applied systematically. So we offer a compendium of solutions, metrics and indicators that support management to implement the Standard.”
Assessment Services Ltd.’s CEO Paul Bridle says, “We’re delighted to be supporting the One Planet Centre with their aims to create a better planet. Independent assessment will help organisations wishing to ensure they play their part in securing the future of our planet in a practical way by providing trust and confidence.”
Jaco Marais, GGI Partner, says: “Organisations being responsible to the people they serve and the planet is at the core of good governance. The Good Governance Institute is proud to be part of this key launch, focused on helping public, third and private sector organisations find a path to excellent environmental behaviours.”
Councillor Andrea Lewis, Deputy Leader of Swansea Council, on agreeing to pilot the Standard said, "I’m confident that we can reach bronze accreditation. The plan is to take the cabinet report to November, not just to outline the climate and nature emergency plan that we have but also to formally commit to adopting the standard, fully engaging with [the Centre] and we really look forward to piloting it and championing it for other local authorities to take part as well."
She continued: "It's important to have measurable standards and an independent set of eyes making sure that we don’t have gaps in things that we should be focusing on. We’ve made a commitment to reach net-zero as a council by 2030. We hope that across the city of Swansea we reach net zero by 2050. But this is about changing behaviours, winning hearts and minds, bringing businesses, bringing the public along with us and of course engaging our staff."
Downloading the Standard is free. For more information visit: https://oneplanetstandard.org/.
A self-assessment tool is available, and organisations can receive support, and opt to use toolkits, training and capacity-building from The One Planet Centre. Goals that organisations can set will involve greater efficiency, reducing raw materials use, tackling the lifecycle ecological footprint, cutting energy use and pollution, and reversing the damage to nature. Social and ecological value can be captured by adding relevant criteria to the National Social Value Portal tool for procurement contracts and linking them to the Well-Being Act (Wales) and Sustainable Development Goal indicators. The end goal would be for all expenditure to, besides achieving its primary business aim, improve the future security of humanity and the natural environment; i.e., to use economic power to do only good.
Understanding the requirements of the One Planet Standard will help senior leaders shape strategic direction, help leaders and managers implement change, help staff shift the corporate culture, help customers, suppliers and service contractors manage product and service life cycles, and contribute to partnership working. The One Planet Standard supports continuous improvement, with a Plan > Do > Check > Act virtuous circle loop. Organisations set a timeline, with milestones, to reach a one planet footprint using measurement and verification tools.
The graph below shows the extent of humanity’s ecological deficit. It is over fifty years since we operated within the limits of what the planet can support. This is why every organisation needs to contribute to the urgent effort to reverse this trend:
Humanity’s ecological footprint from 1960 to 2020 Source: WWF, Living Planet Report.
About The One Planet Centre CIC
The Centre is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company (company no. 12510450). It is based in South Wales, UK. It supports any organisations, communities and individuals seeking to reduce their ecological and carbon footprints with workshops, tools, consultancy, training and communications. Director: David Thorpe. More: https://oneplanetcentre.org.
About Assessment Services Ltd.
An international independent assessment centre with over 30 years of experience in assessment and accreditation. It is committed to ensuring an assessment process that adds value to organisations being accredited. Director: Paul Bridle. More : https://assessmentservices.com/
About the Good Governance Institute
The Good Governance Institute (GGI) exists to help create a fairer, better world. It supports those who run the organisations that can and do shape our world by ensuring they are run by the most talented, skilled and ethical leaders possible and work to build fair systems that consider all, use evidence, are guided by ethics, and thereby take the best decisions. More: https://www.good-governance.org.uk/about-us.
David Thorpe is the author of ''One Planet' Cities: Sustaining Humanity within Planetary Limits and Director of the One Planet Centre Community Interest Company in the UK. He can be contacted on 07901 925671.
The Centre is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company (company no. 12510450). It is based in South Wales, UK. It supports any organisations, communities and individuals seeking to reduce their ecological and carbon footprints with workshops, tools, consultancy, training and communications. Director: David Thorpe. More: https://oneplanetcentre.org.
About Assessment Services Ltd.
An international independent assessment centre with over 30 years of experience in assessment and accreditation. It is committed to ensuring an assessment process that adds value to organisations being accredited. Director: Paul Bridle. More : https://assessmentservices.com/
About the Good Governance Institute
The Good Governance Institute (GGI) exists to help create a fairer, better world. It supports those who run the organisations that can and do shape our world by ensuring they are run by the most talented, skilled and ethical leaders possible and work to build fair systems that consider all, use evidence, are guided by ethics, and thereby take the best decisions. More: https://www.good-governance.org.uk/about-us.
David Thorpe is the author of ''One Planet' Cities: Sustaining Humanity within Planetary Limits and Director of the One Planet Centre Community Interest Company in the UK. He can be contacted on 07901 925671.