Castlefield joins the Employee Race to Zero sustainability challenge

By Helen Tandy

Castlefield is delighted to have joined Giki’s Employee Race to Zero – a two-week long sustainability competition for SMEs.

Launched on 14th October, the Giki event encourages teams from UK SMEs to compete against each other to see who can cut the most carbon, and is supported and endorsed by the UN backed Race to Zero. Participants are then incentivised to take positive climate action through a series of challenges on its interactive platform.

The challenges utilise gamification to develop knowledge and support for net zero commitments, and enable teams to share the positive climate actions they are taking.
Some of the challenges include taking active steps to reduce plastic packaging and energy usage in the office, encouraging greater awareness of sustainability issues, understand how your pension is invested and suggesting ways to reduce food and packaging waste.

Helen Tandy, Castlefield’s Race to Zero team captain, said: “We have been working with Giki since it launched its carbon footprint tool in 2020.

“We build the Giki Zero tool into our employee induction programme, via our Carbon Literacy Training, and use it to help the team to understand their own carbon footprint and how this impacts on Castlefield.”

“The Race to Zero competition enables the team to share the sustainability steps they are taking, along with their progress, and achievements with a bit of added competition thrown in.”

Last year’s Race to Zero event saw participants taking over 14,300 climate actions during the competition, saving 337,020kg carbon, 11m litres of water, 98,178 m2 land, and 61,057 single-use plastics. This was equivalent to 893 short-haul flights, or 39 times around the world in a 4×4!

Race to Zero is a global campaign and the world’s largest coalition of organisations taking immediate action to halve global emissions by 2030. The global initiative now has 14,000 members who have joined the campaign.

Giki is a social enterprise and BCorp that has been working with small and large organisations to help them understand carbon footprints and make changes personally and within business to cut emissions. Giki also provides the carbon calculations for the BBC Blue Peter Green Badge.

For more information on Giki and the Race to Zero competition, please visit: https://giki.earth/join-the-employees-race-to-zero-competition/