Is it worth getting Certified Carbon Literate?
It’s always nice to add another hallmark to the handle, and I’m glad to say that I am now officially Certified Carbon Literate.
The Carbon Literacy Project is a not-for-profit initiative which aims to improve people’s understanding of the climate crisis and support meaningful action. In their words, carbon literacy is “an awareness of the carbon costs and impacts of everyday activities and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions, on an individual, community and organisational basis.”
More than 120,000 individuals have been certified, working for more than 8,000 different companies and organisations.
At the start of the year, I suggested carbon literacy training as one of five steps that any SME could take on the path to sustainable growth.
I always like to practice what I preach, so signed myself up for the specialist Understanding and Communicating Climate Change and Sustainability course from Cambridge Marketing College. I took the course in late January, taking advantage of a new year’s discount on the usual price.
Like other Carbon Literacy courses, it’s a solid day of interactive group-based learning and discussion, with some preparatory study and follow-up work to create an action plan.
The comms course fell into two parts. The morning covered the essentials of the climate crisis, sustainability and climate action. We then took a deeper dive into specific marketing and communication issues, such as greenwashing and internal comms for sustainability programmes.
I’ve been writing about climate issues since (blimey) around the time of the Kyoto Protocol, but still found the the day useful and informative – as well as refreshing and updating me on the essentials, it gave me extra clarity on a few areas that I’d not previously looked at in depth. For someone with less background experience, it should be a great introduction to what can seem like an overwhelming challenging topic.
Specialist Carbon Literacy courses are available for a range of sectors – including automotive, construction, sports, the NHS, journalism and SMEs – and geographic territories, all provided by approved trainers. Some courses are free, others cost around £100-200 depending on sector, which I’d say is reasonable for a day’s professional training and certification (note that some providers split the course over two half-days).
I’d recommend it.