Home care company is first to become carbon neutral in UK

Good Oaks Home Care has become the first home care company in the UK to become carbon neutral, achieving the Carbon Footprint standard accreditation following an audit of its carbon emissions.

Working with the company, Carbon Footprint, to calculate carbon emissions across all four of its offices, recommendations were made after certain areas of improvement were identified.

Most significantly, it was noted that the majority of the company’s emissions were generated by carers travelling by car to provide care at clients’ homes. Electricity consumption across the four sites was also a big factor.

Co-founder of Good Oaks, Ben Ashton, said: “Becoming carbon neutral was an important investment for us to make. We didn’t want to wait for legislation to make this compulsory for smaller businesses.

"It is essential that other home care companies across the UK follow our lead, to calculate, reduce and offset their carbon emissions. As far as we know, we’re the only home care provider to have this accreditation and this needs to change.

“Due to the nature of the service we provide, helping support vulnerable people in their own homes, our carers currently need to use their cars to get between visits. Electric vehicles aren’t an affordable option yet and we needed to take action to reduce the impact of our carbon emissions now.

“Offsetting is just part of our long-term environmental strategy which will see us work hard to reduce our impact on the environment wherever we can. When our contract ends with our current energy supplier, we will also ensure our electricity is provided by 100 per cent renewable energy."

Good Oaks chose to offset all unavoidable carbon emissions by investing in Carbon Footprint Ltd.’s carbon offset projects.

The Poole office is the company’s largest office with over 100 employees and unsurprisingly was responsible for the majority of carbon emissions.

It was decided these emissions will be offset via a tree-planting scheme in autumn in the South West, which plants trees at schools and other bio-diversity sites.

The carbon emissions from their three other offices will be offset by investment in solar power in one of Carbon Footprint’s projects in the states of Tamil Nadu and Telangana in India. The project develops renewable energy generation plants based on Solar PV technology to deliver electricity to the grid.

Dr Wendy Buckley, client director at Carbon Footprint Ltd, said: “Good Oaks has taken a leading position by assessing the carbon impact of its business – even though there is no legislative requirement for them to do this.

"By offsetting unavoidable emissions, they are assuring that the service they deliver to their customers is sustainable and projects support communities both near and far.”

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