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‘Our staff spent 774 hours driving in 2024. That’s 97 working days.’

Development Trusts Association Scotland, or DTAS, is the national member-led organisation for development trusts. These community organisations work to tackle local issues and to improve the quality of life in their area.

Most of DTAS’ work involves promoting and supporting its 350 members spread across the country, like the Unst Partnership in the far north of Shetland and Kirkcudbright Development Trust in Dumfries and Galloway.

In May, DTAS published its first Carbon Reduction Plan. The document includes their current greenhouse gas footprint and sets out in detail how the organisation intends to reach net zero emissions by 2045.

This can be a daunting task for small businesses. We sat down with DTAS events and sustainability coordinator Annie Etherington, who joined Climate Springboard in March, to ask: What did it take to pull this together and get organisational commitment from the senior team?

110,000 kilometres

The first step was calculating their organisational carbon footprint.

It was also a chance to confirm a hunch: “I had a good idea of where [most of] our emissions were. It was business travel,” says Annie. The DTAS team pride themselves on giving personal, face-to-face support to members. But right now, this involves a lot of driving around Scotland in employee-owned cars (known as a grey fleet).

To calculate emissions from a year’s worth of business trips, Annie spent “the best part of two weeks” sifting through expense claims and credit card claims to gather the data she needed: total miles travelled, organised by mode of transport.

For me, the fact that our emissions are so high is a really powerful message. But for some people that's not necessarily their main concern. Annie Etherington

“It wasn't necessarily difficult to locate the data. It was just time-consuming. But it's been so, so, so worth it because the data that we now have is so impactful.”

Overall, staff travelled more than 111,000 kilometres in 2024, accounting for 70% of their total carbon footprint (Annie’s hunch was right!). Cars were the main culprit, accounting for 80% of business travel emissions but just 56% of miles travelled.

Getting creative

This data showed that business travel ought to be the focus for DTAS’ efforts to reach net zero. But to get buy-in from across the organisation, Annie opted to get creative with how she presented this information to colleagues and senior team.

“For me, the fact that our emissions are so high is a really powerful message. But for some people that's not necessarily their main concern. So, I started framing the data in terms of cost savings and time savings.”

For example, she calculated that, based on an average speed of 50 miles per hour, staff spent 774 hours driving in 2024. That’s equivalent to 97 working days. If staff took 15% fewer car journeys per year, that would free up 14 working days.

“I was looking for fun and engaging ways of showing people the impacts of our business travel and trying to, I guess, shock people... but also make people laugh a bit.”

She came up with three scenarios. Each one showed a different way that DTAS could reduce its travel emissions 10% in one year, along with the time and cost benefits.

It paid off. The senior team and board committed to a list of key asks, including prioritising cutting business travel emissions in the next five years.

Wider conversations

To kick things off, Annie has started hosting engagement sessions with staff to raise the subject of in-person meetings and deciding whether to have them online instead.

This has opened up a much wider conversation about staff well-being, she says, including the impact of driving long distances on stress, tiredness and workload.

“There are so many overlapping themes that have started coming up since I started this work.”

“How do we decrease the amount we're driving but still deliver our really valued member support service? We're navigating that at the moment, but a huge win for me is that the whole organisation has realised that it's a conversation that we need to have.”

Top tips

  • Talk about what matters to people. Not everyone will be convinced to change their behaviour because of the carbon footprint of an activity. See if you can quantify it in a different way, like time or money savings.
  • Send a staff survey. If you’re struggling to get organisational commitment, ask your staff about their environmental concerns. Our survey found that 75% were ‘concerned’ or ‘very concerned’ about the impact of their work activity on climate change.
  • Have fun with it! Greenhouse gas emissions data can be dry, so try to create fun facts. Use graphics and visual aids to help people connect and understand.

Here are some great recent examples of organisations having fun while getting people to pay attention to the climate crisis: