Yes, we really have helped plant a forest!
Before we get to that, you may remember our Magenta Goes Green initiative from 2020 – January 2020 Blog and July 2020 Blog
As a result of our Magenta goes Green 2020 initiative, we achieved the following last year:
Used 266% less paper compared with 2019 (14,322 sheets in 2020 compared with 38,202 in 2019)
Ensured we were (and continue to be) powered completely by renewable electricity, lowering our carbon impact by 6,693kg of Co2 each year
Donated £847 we saved on our energy costs and printing to Sustainable Wales Charity
What now?
Following our efforts last year, we’ve been thinking about how we can contribute even further to society and the environment.
We’ve realised that whilst we absolutely want to and are committed to providing the financial planning service that we do, we want to do it without harming the environment in the process. So, even though 100% of the office’s energy usage is through renewable sources (and we’re very pleased with this), the fact remains that using the kettle to make a coffee and powering our laptops to work on financial plans uses energy and creates carbon emissions.
Given the nature of what we do and because we’re a small team, we know we are not a big polluter, but it all counts.
We’ve educated ourselves further on the environmental impact we have as a team and what we can do to mitigate this. This means that whilst we are not going to say we will no longer drive to meetings, drink coffee (heaven forbid) or use computers to work, we do want to do something positive.
An effective way of doing something for good is to offset the carbon we emit by planting trees, re-foresting areas where trees have been cut down and building wind turbines to create clean energy. As financial planners we naturally believe in going to experts for things you aren’t likely to do so well yourself, and we certainly don’t consider ourselves well-equipped to plant a forest or build a wind turbine!
As such, we’re delighted to have been able to donate to Ecologi, a Bristol-based company who realised that people and businesses want to do good and help with protecting our environment, but don’t have the skills or scale to do so effectively. Ecologi have the reach to be able to donate sums gathered from us and others and be able to use it for conservation efforts all over the world.
Click the link below to check out our virtual Magenta forest, which shows we have 118 (and counting) trees in it. It will also show you the projects we’ve contributed to around the world, how much carbon has been offset as a result and how many long-haul flights this translates into (hint: it’s 6 more than any of us in the team have done recently!) You can also find out more about Ecologi as a company if you click around the site.
https://ecologi.com/magentafinancialplanning
Should you wish, you can also sign up and start growing your own forest. If you do, we would love to hear about it.