Louise McAward-White, Product Consultant, Axiell:
Today (7 November 2022) is Carbon Literacy Action Day, coinciding with start of COP27 and intending to catalyse action on climate change through Carbon Literacy training and commitment to actions. What better day to share the start of the Axiell UK journey into carbon literacy and sustainability?
Axiell UK set up a Sustainability Group earlier this year with the aim of looking at our carbon footprint and becoming a more sustainable business. As a group, we’ve recently undertaken Carbon Literacy Training with the Carbon Literacy Project via London Museum of Water and Steam. Liz Power, Museum Director had trained her team at the museum; and kindly agreed to train the Sustainability Group at Axiell as part of their commitment to sustainability.
The Carbon Literacy training was enlightening for the group; we were able to reflect on our own personal understanding of climate change and carbon literacy and relate this to our individual roles at Axiell UK.
I found that the training encouraged me to think critically about my choices at home, including travel, food consumption and energy supplier, while also giving me practical tools for how to have conversations about climate change with others both at home and at work. It particularly resonated with the Axiell team when we reflected on our spheres of influence – that is, who can we have an influence on through our decisions and actions. In our role as a supplier to the cultural sector, we have a lot of potential people we can reach, partner with and support in conversations about climate change and sustainability.
Carbon Literacy Actions
As part of the training, we all committed to actions in our workplace and in the wider GLAM sector:
- Spread the work of the UK sustainability group across the Axiell’s other regions and support creating local groups
- Investigate the Axiell pension scheme to see how “green” its investments are
- Assess who attends GLAM sector events based on distance to minimise travel
- Write a blog about our experience of Carbon Literacy training
- Develop information for Axiell to provide in tenders about sustainability and carbon emissions.
- Feature sustainability/carbon reduction as a key theme at the 2023 European User Conference, to provide users with the opportunity to discuss and hear about work being done in the sector.
These actions will help to reduce Axiell UK’s carbon footprint; but also, encouraged by the training, we are keen to use our wider platform, spheres of influence, and work with customers and partners on sustainability and carbon reduction.
What next?
Over the next few months, we’ll be implementing the actions we devised as part of the Carbon Literacy training – starting with publishing this blog!
We are currently in the process of a full carbon footprinting exercise; measuring our current carbon footprint for our buildings, business travel, and electricity consumption for home workers. These are Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Once we have completed this exercise, we’ll have recommendations to implement to reduce our carbon footprint.
Using these carbon footprint recommendations, training actions, and other activities already in progress like reducing print and source marketing, reducing travel through online training delivery; this gives us plenty of commitments to take into our full action plan for how we reduce carbon emissions and make sustainability a key part of Axiell UK.
We also want to hear from you, how could Axiell UK support your work to be more sustainable and reduce your carbon emissions?
“Axiell are, of course, well known as being a ‘thought leader’ in the application of new technology in the GLAM sector. We’re determined to use our position of influence to spread the message about climate change, and do what we can to support Archives, Libraries and Museums along their path towards net zero.” – Ian Rowson, Regional Manager, Axiell ALM UK
Carbon Literacy Training and Resources for UK GLAM Sector
As part of collating this blog, I’ve pulled together a list of resources for museums, archives and libraries.
