We are thrilled to announce that Nene Park Trust has been awarded ‘Silver’ level Investors in the Environment (IEE) accreditation this week.

Investors in the Environment (IIE) is a national accreditation scheme designed to help organisations save time and money, reduce their impact on the environment and get promoted for their green credentials.

Following our bronze accreditation in 2018 we have been working hard toward high level criteria and targets and have demonstrated our commitment to minimising our environmental impact and helping to set the standard for the environment. Following the detailed audit process in January this year we were awarded a score of 78% and silver level.

Key highlights over the past year were:

• Undertaking work towards an organisation climate emergency declaration and strategy, with clear commitments to work towards carbon neutrality by 2025
• Recording significant resources more frequently than required and excellent analysis of figures
• Calculating our carbon footprint for 2019 & 2020
• Adding targets relating to the environment for all staff in their Personal Development Reviews

Here a summary graphic of the Trust’s resource usage since our last audit:

In the areas of electricity, water, gas, paper, vehicle fuel and waste we have significantly reduced our organisation’s usage. While this is partly due to the pandemic and many staff members working from home, we were on track to reduce our usage in these areas anyway.

The two areas of increase are the use of red diesel and the amount of waste going to landfill. The increase in the use of red diesel can be attributed to the Trust taking Woodlands sports pitches back under management plus the work we have done managing the two stewardship areas at Castor. We also did a lot of cut and collect work on the wildflower areas in the Park last year.

The increased waste to landfill percentage is due to people putting dog waste and other contamination into the recycling bins and so this gets rejected for recycling and goes to the energy recovery facility instead. We will be working on a new campaign to remind our visitors about the correct use of the different bins.

We will continue to work on reducing consumption in all areas and are now all set to aim for the top level ‘Green’ accreditation over the coming year.

This work ties in with Nene Park Trust's climate emergency declaration, in which we aim to:

• Achieve net zero emissions from our own operations by 2050, initially through our own and credible and recognised offsetting schemes, but with a commitment to reduce overall emissions in line with the Paris Agreement’s target, and reduce the proportion of offsetting over time. This deadline will be reviewed in detail at the NPT Staff Conference in autumn 2020. 
• Use our influence to encourage and support visitors, partners, stakeholders, suppliers and others to dramatically reduce their carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement’s target, and ensure they do not take actions that prevent the target being met.
• Promote the role that Nene Park can play in increasing awareness of and supporting our communities who are already seeing the direct impacts of climate change, locally, across the UK and internationally.
• Ensure that climate considerations are central and obvious in all our on-going policies, activities, communications and events.
• ‘Double Nature’ across our landholding by continuing to improve land management techniques and delivering biodiversity gains.