Our impact
Annual impact measurement
Little Blue Research recognises that it has a responsibility to the environment beyond legal and regulatory requirements. We are committed to reducing our environmental impact and continually improving our environmental performance as an integral part of our business strategy and operating methods, with regular review points. We will encourage customers, suppliers and other stakeholders to do the same.
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To identify, understand and address Little Blue Research’s environmental impact, we assessed the company’s carbon emissions between March 2024 to February 2025. We annually assess emissions generated by our main activities and calculate a total annual carbon footprint.
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Using guidance from the Carbon Trust’s Carbon Footprint Guide and the Defra 2024 Emission Conversion Factors, the CO2e emissions within scopes 1 and 2 of the guide have been calculated, as well as scope 3.
The calculations assist in estimating the company’s largest emissions sources, allowing targeted sustainability practices to be carried out.
New for this year
At Little Blue Research, we are committed to continually improving our environmental impact by changing the way we work and how we operate. In 2024 we have:
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Updated our materiality screening using the latest version of the ENCORE tool
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New software added to data storage emissions calculations
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Updated our homeworking emissions methodology, using recent research to more accurately calculate our homeworking carbon footprint
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Included short-haul business travel (within London) in our footprint.
Total emissions = 2.4tCO2e
Little Blue Research donated £75 to the Woodland Trust to help them care for enough woodland to capture and store approximately 3tCO2e (Woodland Trust, 2024).
The calculated carbon emissions equate to around 3.26kgCO2e per working day per employee, and approximately 9.79 kgCO2e per working day across the team. This figure is similar to last year despite fewer total employee working days during the period. This is a result of updates to the methodology. The updated methodology uses recent research on homeworking in the UK to estimate energy consumption, and the latest Defra emission factors to calculate emissions.
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Notes:
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Office & household energy assumes average energy consumption to be constant across every working day;
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Office emissions calculated using data from the Centre for Energy and Environment using data from CIBSE;
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Household energy used Defra homeworking emissions estimates and a ratio of homeworking to office energy use from Exeter University and the Centre for Energy and the Environment;
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Business travel, i.e., journeys to and from conferences has been included for this year in the commute and business travel category, including travel within London
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Find out more about the Woodland Trust here
What we're doing to reduce our impact
Office & household energy
We rent office space from Work.Life, a B Corp certified company which uses 100% renewable electricity providers¹.
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Appliances
We plan on repairing our devices where possible instead of buying new devices, and recycling anything we can after repairing is no longer viable.
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We reduce vampire energy consumption by encouraging staff to unplug devices and remove them from charge when not in use or at full battery.
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Commute
We support flexible working arrangements enabling remote working.
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Data storage
We reduce unnecessary data storage.
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We use Microsoft cloud servers to store our data, reducing emissions by up to 98% compared to traditional on-site solutions².
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For the following assessment period Little Blue Research will plan for an email review systemto limit storage.
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Website
Our site uses minimal animation, and includes no video-player to limit data transferred.
We are limiting the number of back-up sites that we have, and ensuring that content on our site is streamlined.
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Paper & print
We only print paper where necessary, using FSC certified paper if available.
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Procurement
We have procurement criteria and thresholds for use alongside a company environment policy.
When placing online orders, products are assessed for environmental impact using Amazon’s Climate Pledge Friendly program.
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Customers
We include sustainability commitments in our proposals and the offer of an estimated carbon footprint on our project work.
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² The carbon benefits of cloud computing (2018)
