Carbon Literacy Training Kicks Off at PXC

Why Carbon Literacy?

For our business to reach its milestones, we will rely on the ingenuity and problem-solving ability of our people. Equipping them with the knowledge around climate change and ways in which the business can address this are crucial.

Our environmental policy focuses on four pillars – with the first being our impact on carbon emissions and looking to become a net zero business and achieve our Science Based Targets.

Our third pillar focuses on our people, recognising that without the hard work of our employees, these targets will not be achievable.

What is Carbon Literacy?

Carbon Literacy is described as “An awareness of the carbon dioxide costs and impacts of everyday activities, and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions, on an individual, community and organisational basis”.

PXC have partnered with the Carbon Literacy Project to create a course which is tailored for our employee base. Carbon Literacy Project have trained over 85,000 individuals to date, and this immersive learning experience is designed to ensure people come have the knowledge, and the drive, to take positive action on climate.

Course Outline

The course starts with a basic overview of the science, explaining some key concepts like the greenhouse effect and greenhouse gases, and moving on to explore common misconceptions around climate change and the difference between climate and weather.

We then move onto relating this to the context we are in – firstly the global perspective and discussing the issue of equity. Then moving into the UK context, exploring some of the key shifts required within the economy, and how that will impact us both as individuals and at our company. We also create and review personal carbon footprints.

The final session dives into the sector – understanding firstly how some other businesses have pioneering initiatives, and others fall foul of greenwashing claims. We examine the telecommunications sector, the key drivers to emissions and how we compare. We finally move onto our business, what our key levers are and brainstorm ideas of how to improve our performance on emissions reductions.

The session finishes with pledges – actions the participants undertake to not only improve their own personal carbon footprint but also taking wider collective action, usually within the company.

Feedback

Our colleagues found the course illuminating and insightful.

“As a member of our NetZeroHeroes committee, and general environment enthusiast, I feel I'm already fairly clued up on most things carbon-based... or so I thought! said Alex Ullmann. "It's a topic that can easily become a little overwhelming, but I liked the way that the session balanced hard hitting facts with a good measure of pragmatism and encouragement to work out how we can make a difference."

We hope this is the first of many training sessions for our colleagues to better understand climate and how they can each play a role towards our net zero goals.