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Corporate Social Responsibility
The 181st Street team has been highly active in the sustainability and social impact space for over a decade and offers a suite of ESG advisory services developed through tangible business experience, beyond the buzzwords.
We’re committed to making our own business as responsible as possible.
Our environmental commitments
- We measure our carbon footprint (scopes 1, 2 and 3) annually using Normative's business carbon calculator and our financial data. For the year 2022/23, our total carbon footprint was 4.85 tonnes CO2e, of which: 0 was scope 1, 0.0898 was scope 2, and 4.76 was scope 3.
- We are actively working to reduce our emissions and make the most sustainable choices. To account for our unavoidable carbon emissions, we have protected an area of the Gola rainforest in Sierra Leone, through our impact partner Stand For Trees and the REDD+ programme. This has been validated and verified under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and achieved CCB Gold Status for exceptional climate and biodiversity benefits. Since 2022, we have offset 5 tonnes of CO2, and we hold retirement certificates verifying permanent removal of these carbon credits from circulation. Supporting the Gola rainforest project has additional benefits, as this important eco-system is a biodiversity hotspot home to 60 globally threatened species, and this project is also helping to uplift 122 coca-farming communities after years of conflict and the Ebola outbreak, in the world's 8th poorest country.
- Since 2022, 181st Street has supported the prevention of 32.5 tCO2e from being emitted through 21 verified carbon avoidance projects. Through our impact partner Ecologi, we have funded verified carbon avoidance projects around the world, which are certified by either the Gold Standard or Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), as well as the Community and Biodiversity Standard (CCBS) and the Sustainable Development Verified Impact Standard (SD VISta). All projects are additionally vetted by carbon intelligence platform Sylvera, to ensure they are of the highest standard. These include solar power generation in Morocco, capturing waste biogas for energy in Turkey and India, and distributing cleaner cookstoves in Kenya.
- Our website is powered by renewable energy: hosted by Krystal who use Ecotricity for their power and have achieved a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) rating of at least 1.2 at all their data centres. According to Website Carbon Calculator, 0.23g of CO2 is produced every time someone visits our site. Based on 10,000 monthly page views, we would produce 27.69kg of CO2 equivalent per year. Our site is cleaner than 76% of websites globally.
- We have a sustainable procurement policy in place to inform our choice of suppliers and the purchase of any goods and services we require for ourselves, or our clients.
- Our operating system is Google Workspace. Google have eliminated their carbon legacy through offsetting, and have made a commitment to operate on 24/7 carbon-free energy in all data centres and campuses worldwide. Due to the digital nature of our work, we rely on some cloud-based technology from large multi-national providers, who often use renewable energy credits rather than energy direct from renewable sources. Many have pledges to move to direct sourcing, but have not completed this yet. Whilst we cannot control how these providers power their servers, we have committed to reducing our own digital carbon footprint through 6 monthly data purges. This includes deleting old files from cloud-based servers and deleting and archiving emails to minimise our storage needs and therefore our energy consumption from these sources.
- Since 2022, we have funded the planting of 550 trees through our impact partnership with Ecologi.
- Wherever possible, we travel by train and electric taxi. When meeting clients or hosting events, we choose independent businesses, ideally social enterprises or venues with a sustainability or locally-sourced focus.
- We work with our clients to ensure that any sustainability claims they make in their marketing and communications are compliant with the Green Claims Code.
- To demonstrate our commitment to reducing our digital carbon footprint, we have signed the Sustainable Web Manifesto.
- We don't do 'climate doom'. Although we recognise the seriousness and urgency of the climate emergency, when we produce copy and campaigns for clients, we avoid triggering eco-anxiety. It's not good for people's mental health, it stops them taking action, and it's against our solutions-focused ethos. Plus, selling the idea of climate utopia instead of climate doom is proven to get better results. It's behavioural science.
Our social commitments
- We pay all our staff, contractors & freelancers at least the real living wage, and are an accredited Living Wage Employer with the Living Wage Foundation. We also operate a profit participancy model so all staff and associates who work for us within the year get a fair share of the profits to reward their hard work.
- We offer all our staff and contractors flexible working arrangements, including working from home and adjusting their hours around unpaid caring commitments.
- We don't offer any unpaid internships.
- We recognise we need to bring more diverse voices into our team and leadership. When we have vacancies, we pro-actively work with recruitment partners and platforms to advertise these to a diverse candidate pool. We also use a blind hiring process to evaluate candidates on their relevant experience only and ensure we recruit based on the best talent, without bias. Our team works remotely to ensure we have access to a diverse pool of skills from around the world. When it comes to invisible diversity, we don't push for disclosure.
- We have made The Mental Health At Work Commitment to promote an open culture around mental health and provide all our staff and contractors with mental health resources and support.
- We actively promote our employee's "right to disconnect" with a policy against sending emails, using digital communications or making work calls out of hours.
- We provide all employees and contractors who work 20+ hours a week for us with a subscription to a music or mindfulness app of their choice, to support their wellbeing.
- While most companies do paid volunteering, we want our team to take time off from changing the world to recharge their creative batteries, which is why we offer 5 paid duvet days per year.
- Our Managing Partners give at least 2 days of their time per month minimum to offering their strategic advice and support to charities, startups and campaigning organisations on a pro-bono basis. Whether it's advocacy and public affairs support for campaigns such as securing fair wages for farmers, or strategic marketing advice to small charities looking to grow, we're committed to giving organisations that are working on the world's to-do list the expert support they could not otherwise afford. In 2023, we gave 38 hours of pro bono support before we made our pledge of 2 days per month. In 2024, we are on track to donate over 192 hours of pro bono support.
- Our Managing Partners are experience mentors, and give their time to a number of start-up programmes specialising in sustainability-focused and social impact brands, including a number of UK University Accelerators, the Amazon Sustainability Accelerator and programmes that build skills and diversity in tech.
- We have signed the Employer With Heart Charter in support of The Smallest Things premature baby charity. Parents facing the worry and uncertainty of visiting their premature baby in hospital should not have to spend that time as maternity or paternity leave. We understand that premature babies need more time; time to develop, time to grow and time for parents and babies to bond at home after neonatal intensive care. That’s why we've extended paid parental leave by the number of days a baby is born before their due date, or stays in NICU. We pay extended leave as full pay and class this as compassionate leave so it doesn't eat into Maternity, Paternity or Shared Parental Leave. It is particularly important to us to ensure that our staff are fully supported through premature birth and NICU, as our Senior Managing Partner Sian has lived experience of this with her daughter.
- We regularly speak at industry events and conferences, provide media training and events communications to our clients, and send our employees to training events. We have signed the Diversity Charter to show our commitment to ensuring diversity at any conferences and events we speak at, work with or send our employees to.
- When we create copy and campaigns for clients, we refer to the Conscious Style Guide during the editing process, to ensure that our work is inclusive.
- Every month, we invest a percentage of our revenue into microfinance loans for entrepreneurs in developing countries through Lend With Care. When they make repayments, we use the money to fund more loans. So far, we have helped 776 entrepreneurs with 110 loans. This has also created 306 jobs within the businesses, and supported 2,405 family members. (As of June 2024)
Our governance commitments
- Our leadership board has a 50:50 gender balance.
- As a signatory of the Prompt Payment Code, we have committed to paying all our suppliers and partners promptly.
- When working on social value creation projects, our work sometimes involves working closely with vulnerable people, to ensure that projects are inclusive of all stakeholders and design is informed by lived experience. Our staff are DBS checked, and we have a safeguarding policy and procedure in place which is signed by all staff at the start of any project involving vulnerable people.
- We recognise that ESG is a journey. We don't expect our clients to be perfect (we're not either!), and we're happy to support them to take more steps in the right direction. But we're not here to help brands greenwash. All potential new clients are screened by our board before any pitches are sent, (reviewing their publicly available impact data and Green Claims Code compliance) to ensure that we can make a tangible difference to them, and that they're a good values fit for us.
Need support with your ESG journey?
We have an extensive team of expert associates specialising in sustainability, ethical business, governance, finance and compliance, who can support you on your ESG journey. If you need help writing your strategies and policies, embedding your values, measuring your impact or communicating your efforts, we can support you.