During 2022, we focussed our efforts on objective 3, to gain a much deeper understanding of the way that companies are managing and reporting their environmental emissions created from operating in Wiltshire. We formed a team of volunteer ‘citizen researchers’ and developed an assessment methodology to evaluate the policy, targets and reported mitigation actions across a sample of 50 member-nominated local organisations. The conclusions and recommendations resulting from this research project have recently been published in our report ‘How are Wiltshire Businesses Tackling the
Climate Crisis?’ - [click to download the report].
The main findings from this report are:-

• Less than 5% of UK firms are regulated to monitor and report their climate impacts.

• Large-scale, consumer-facing brands are most likely to be reporting on their emissions, policies and progress to reduce their climate impacts.

• Across Wiltshire, very few Small & Medium-sized firms are doing anything to manage their environmental responsibilities.

• Most companies focus only on their Direct carbon emissions ( Scope 1 & 2) with full and complete reporting of Scope 3 emissions being very rare across our study sample group.

• Lack of clarity about the scope and boundaries of business emissions, combined with poorly specified targets and opaque performance reporting, raises serious concerns about the claims of many large companies to become truly ‘carbon neutral’ within their defined timeframes.

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A summary of the Overall Evaluation scores given by our research team is shown in the graph below       ( Note: zero firms scored more than 8).