Governance Geek Sustainability Policy

Introduction

Governance Geek is committed towards ethical, responsible and environmentally friendly practices that consider how it can reduce its carbon footprint, decrease its waste and improve its sustainability.

One of Governance Geek’s strategic objectives is to be a responsible organisation. 

Policy Aims

To have a positive impact on society and the environment as a whole through its business and operations. 

To continuously improve our sustainability through an ongoing programme to reduce or remove environmentally damaging activities and encourage activities that, where possible, improve or conserve the environment.

Scope

Governance Geek is committed to sustainable development to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations.

Our aspiration is protect human and environmental health within our operations, services, management, and connections with other organisations and customers.

Policy Statement

Governance Geek is committed to continuously improving its sustainability and conserving the environment by:

·       Taking the environment and sustainability into account in decision making and strategies.

·       Actively seeking ways to minimise the use of all materials, supplies, and energy, and, wherever practical, use renewable, recyclable and biodegradable materials and components.

·       Actively seek ways to minimise overall waste, reusing resources where practical and appropriate.

·       Monitor, assess, and report on a continuous basis, the environmental impact of Governance Geek’s activities and compliance with this policy.

·       Monitor our impact and collaboratively generating new ideas on how to reduce our carbon footprint.

Values in Action

To bring our strategic objectives to life, Governance Geek utilises its company values to guide its thinking and actions. This Policy will implement those values in the following ways:

Empowerment – Utilising business insights to inform decision making and be informed about the impact on sustainability that our actions could have.

Transparency – Being direct and clear about our activities, our actions to work towards reducing our carbon footprint and achieving net zero.

Integrity – Ensuring we don’t compromise on our vision, mission, values, objectives and policies to achieve success.

Accountability – Accept, analyse, put right and continually move forwards in our pursuit of sustainability. 

Responsibilities

All our people at Governance Geek have a duty to act within this policy, ensure it is followed and to draw attention to any breaches are areas in which it could improve. 

All our people, whether permanent or temporary, are responsible for the promotion and advancement of this policy.  

The following roles have specific responsibility: 

·       Governance Geek’s Directors - are responsible for ensuring that this policy is implemented, followed, and reviewed annually or when material changes occur.  The directors are also responsible for ensuring that this policy is enforced, implemented and any breaches are dealt with appropriately. 

·       Sustainability champion – a director (Danielle Peel) will act as the ‘sustainability champion’ who will lead Governance Geek’s action plan to foster all aspects of environmentally friendly, responsible and sustainable decision making, including regular updates on progress against the actions identified.

Breaches of the Policy by our people may be considered as misconduct and will be dealt with in accordance with Governance Geek’s disciplinary procedures.

Policy implementation

All employees, volunteers, members, board trustees, committee members or other persons within its workforce will be involved in creating a sustainable environment and one that values the environment and the people within it. This will be implemented and promoted through the following channels:

Procurement

Adding environmental and sustainability credentials to our supply chain selection process. 

Identifying options to repurpose resources, such as recycling our old technology devices, resulting in positive environmental and financial impacts. 

Ask our supply chain about their innovative ways to reduce emissions and how we can consider this responsibility in procurement and partnership decisions. 

Vehicles 

Further develop and integrate existing monitoring systems to record and subsequently manage the vehicles we use to undertake our work, energy efficiency, including fuel carbon footprint. 

Ensure new vehicle purchases, meet EU emission standards and vehicle emission legislation and that electric, hybrid, LPG powered vehicles are considered at each opportunity. 

Transport

Governance Geek’s Expenses Policy requires its people to use trains and other environmentally friendly forms of public transport as far as practical and we continue to monitor and heavily encourage the use of car sharing and public transport for our business.

Communication

The policy will be communicated by:

·       Making available a copy of the policy to prospective applicants (for employed or voluntary roles).

·       Ensuring all new starters have the opportunity to discuss the policy with directors.

·       Making use of team and board meetings to discuss the policy and defining areas where practice could be improved.

·       Providing sustainability training for directors and those in decision making roles.

·       Including reference to abiding by the policy in the staff handbook and induction process.

·       Incorporating specific responsibilities into job/role descriptions as appropriate.

Policy monitoring

This policy will be monitored to judge to what extent it is working and identify areas for improvement. Monitoring will relate to both Governance Geek’s people and stakeholders. 

Governance Geek also reserves the right to conduct sustainability impact assessment on activities which take place; this will be considered by Governance Geek’s strategy the sustainability champion. 

Review

The sustainability policy will be reviewed by the company directors in July 2025 unless changes in policy, governance or other circumstances require a review prior to this date.