Discuss or replace

A friend (soloist) mentioned they’d completed a “triple switch” as the kickstart to their climate journey recently, and we were discussing what they might do next.

(Triple Switch are a not-for-profit who help you with switching your power, banking, and super fund).

One next step you could try, soloist or otherwise, is to export your bank statement or accounting file, highlight all of your suppliers, and go do some digging.

Check their websites for sustainability (or similar) pages. If they don’t have a page, email and ask for either their sustainability statement, or their 2030 agenda – they may have a document that hasn’t made it to the website yet.

Read every supplier’s page – it’ll give you a sense for what everyone seems to be doing, and what matters most to you (if you don’t have an idea already). It’ll also highlight which of your suppliers are lagging behind everyone else.

If you spot one lagging, you have at least two options: Discuss, or replace.

DISCUSS:

Consider if this supplier is critical to your offerings, or just one of many alternatives.

If they’re critical, it’s worth discussing where you feel they’re lagging behind in their climate commitments.

It can be as simple as an email or a DM asking if they plan to do something about X, Y, or Z in the near future, eg:

“I notice you’ve mentioned plans to be fully circular by 2030, but it looks like you’re still using non-recyclable materials for {this-thing}, any plans to fix that?”

Cool companies will like being challenged and often have a response ready, or will put it on the agenda to be discussed and keep you in the loop.

REPLACE:

Harsh, but if they’re easily replaceable, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to step up climate-wise, you can look for another supplier who will.

The number of climate aware companies are constantly on the rise, so while there will always be exceptions, there’s bound to be an alternative in many cases.

Your suppliers make up a huge percentage of your scope 3 emissions, which are the hardest of the 3 scopes to clean up.

This is an easy, low-barrier way to get rolling and start doing some good right away 👍