The world continues to experience a climate and health emergency, with climate change described in the Lancet as “the greatest threat to global health of the 21st century”.

At Chiltern Music Therapy, we have made a commitment to reducing our impact on the environment and to act in an environmentally sustainable manner. Each year we report on our carbon emissions and today we wanted to share with you what we’ve achieved in the last 12 months. 

The highlights:

• We have decreased our overall carbon footprint by 26% in the last year. This change has mainly come about from a large reduction in staff petrol car emissions, no flights being used, and no longer having a permanent office.
• Our main area of impact continues to be staff travel, with staff-owned vehicle emissions amounting to 96.9% of our total carbon footprint, and a further 2.3% coming from the use of public transport. This marks a slight shift towards public transport use compared to previous years. However our staff travel related emissions have had a 25% reduction!
• We have also now made sure that reducing our carbon footprint is now embedded in the organisation’s strategy documents, with a stated aim of reducing our carbon footprint per session by 5% each year.

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What else are we working on?

• Staff can now claim mileage expenses for using their bicycle when travelling for work.
• We continue to offer sets of second hand instruments for staff to leave at their clinical settings, if it enables them to use public transport or active travel rather than their own vehicle.
• We provide ethical, low carbon footprint food where possible when catering for meetings and events. Staff are also encouraged to go meat-free when providing their own food, although it is still a personal choice.
• We will be tackling our digital carbon footprint, including our website, emails and cloud storage.
• We are also looking at moving to a more ethical bank.

Read the full report below.