Good Oaks Home Care leads the industry in combating carbon emissions

The homecare franchise has been awarded ‘Carbon Footprint Standard’ accreditation after offsetting its carbon emissions

Good Oaks Home Care has become one of the first homecare franchises in the UK to become entirely carbon neutral. The business has gained the ‘Carbon Footprint Standard’ accreditation following an audit of its carbon emissions.

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The care franchise worked with the team at Carbon Footprint to calculate its carbon emissions across all four of its offices based in Dorset, Hampshire, Reading, and Mid Sussex. Carbon Footprint evaluated the emissions that Good Oaks recorded and identified recommendations for reducing these.

The majority of the company’s emissions were generated by carers travelling by car to provide care at clients’ homes. The other significant source of emissions was electricity consumption across the four sites.

Good Oaks chose to offset all unavoidable carbon emissions by investing in Carbon Footprint Ltd.’s carbon offset projects and funded this centrally. Good Oaks Poole, the company’s largest office with over 100 employees, was responsible for a majority of carbon emissions. These will be offset via a tree-planting scheme in the South West, which plants trees at schools and other bio-diversity sites. The planting will take place in the autumn.

Co-founder of Good Oaks, Ben Ashton, said: “Becoming carbon neutral was an important investment for us to make. We didn’t want to wait for legislation to make this compulsory for smaller businesses. It is essential that other homecare companies across the UK follow our lead to calculate, reduce and offset their carbon emissions. As far as we know, we’re the only homecare franchise to have this accreditation and this needs to change.

“Due to the nature of the service we provide, helping support vulnerable people in their own homes, our carers currently need to use their cars to get between visits. Electric vehicles aren’t an affordable option yet and we needed to take action to reduce the impact of our carbon emissions now. Offsetting is just part of our long-term environmental strategy which will see us work hard to reduce our impact on the environment wherever we can. When our contract ends with our current energy supplier, we will also ensure our electricity is provided by 100 per cent renewable energy.”

Carbon Footprint’s tree-planting project ensures that all trees planted are native, broadleaf species that help to preserve the UK’s biodiversity. For every tree that is planted, Good Oaks’ investment will also save one tree from being cut down in the Brazilian Amazon via Carbon Footprint’s avoided deforestation programme in South America.
The carbon emissions from Good Oaks’ three franchisees will be offset by investment in wind power in one of Carbon Footprint’s projects in the state of Maharashtra in India. This project generates power using renewable wind energy and sells the power generated to the state grid.

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