At 3Keel, the biggest impact we can make is by working with clients to drive ambitious and transformational changes. Having said that, we believe that real change does start at home. To be credible sustainability experts, it is important that we lead by example and practice what we preach. We’re taking action to reduce our own footprint, and to consider our social and environmental impacts as a business. We’ve published our latest impact report here, which details our progress.
Our energy
The claim of zero-carbon energy is one that’s being made increasingly often. Unfortunately it is also being watered down. There are all sorts of ways to claim that your energy is ‘fully renewable’ but some green tariffs are ‘greener’ than others. To make sure our energy is renewable, have a 9.7 kWp array of solar panels on our head office’s roof. The panels provide the office with energy all year round. What is more, from early spring to late autumn they provide enough for us to be significant exporters of energy back to the grid.
Of course there are times when the sun isn’t shining. To meet our residual needs, we use Ecotricity. It builds and sources 100% renewable energy directly from its own wind and solar farms and is the UK’s only vegan-certified energy supplier.
We try to minimise our consumption where possible. For example, we’ve installed efficient LED lighting everywhere in the office and upgraded our electric heating system. This ‘smart’ system saves us more than 20% in the winter months. We also require a full energy efficiency rating and lifecycle costing for any new electrical purchases.
Our waste
As a consulting business we don’t produce much waste, but we still want to take all the right steps. So, we prioritise reducing consumption impacts. For example, we’re an essentially paperless business (we only print if our clients really need it, and our printer ink is refillable – so no cartridges). We also have a food waste collection and recycling scheme, which we offer for free to other businesses in our business park.
Our travel
The challenges we face span more than just Oxfordshire, so we do sometimes need to travel. We use video-conferencing and try to walk, cycle and take public transport as much as possible. However, there are some rare occasions where we need to drive or fly.
For these occasions have two EV chargers at our office and subsidise EVs for our employees, while for flights we always travel economy and invest in responsible offsets.
Our social impact
Sustainability is about much more than just the environment. Change needs to be intersectional and collaborative, and we must consider social impacts on communities both near and far from the office. We have a long-standing relationship with FarmAbility, a local charity that we support with volunteering and donations. For further charitable support, we also donate 1% of our profits each year, with colleagues putting forward a nominations and a poll deciding the recipients decided. For the 24-25 financial year, our chosen charities were: Farm Africa, Oxford Mutual Aid and Yellow Submarine.
Staff are each allowed 22.5 hours (three days) paid time to volunteer. Whether on land or at sea, individually or in teams, 3Keelers can be found getting involved in all sorts of community activities. We need to work harder to ensure colleagues feel able to take up the time, as in 24-25, 25% of available hours was used. This is up from 20% the year before but we want more volunteers to use their hours to good purpose.
Everything else
As sustainability specialists we try to make sure sustainability is engrained in all of our decisions. The little things count too. This means doing things like buying our loo roll from Who Gives A Crap?, catering meetings with vegetarian/vegan meals, buying refurbished or second-hand equipment where possible, supporting flexible working for staff to minimise unnecessary travel, and much more!
Sharing our ideas
Above all, we think it’s so important just to talk to our neighbours and share any ideas we have. As an example, we shared the experience and business case for installing solar panels on our roof with our neighbours. Two businesses in our business park since installed solar panels. We provided them with guidance on securing planning permission, provided templates we had used ourselves, and assisted with calculating the business case for installation.
2025 Impact Report now online
If you’d like to get into the details, head on over to our full sustainability report. We’re always open to discuss and share any ideas that we have – and of course if there’s anything else you think we’ve missed, we’re all ears…
