Our Aims
Count Your Carbon was created in response to the urgent climate challenges we face, with a clear mission: to help educational settings reduce their carbon emissions by 50% by 2030.
Aligned with the Department for Education’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy – which calls for all schools to appoint a dedicated Sustainability Lead and to have a Climate Action Plan by 2025 – Count Your Carbon offers tools and guidance to help educational settings meet these expectations and drive meaningful change across the sector.Â
Support with climate action planning
By 2025, the Department for Education is expecting all schools to have a Climate Action Plan and a Sustainability Lead. The areas of focus for climate action plans, as outlined by the DfE are Adaptation and Resilience, Biodiversity, Climate Education and Green Careers, and Decarbonisation. Count Your Carbon supports settings to generate the decarbonisation section of their climate action plans and provides the tools needed to help track progress as they begin implementing carbon-cutting actions. As schools return to measure their footprint each year, we hope they will begin to see a significant reduction in their carbon emissions and move closer to net zero. Â
Carbon literacy and climate education
Through Count Your Carbon and our classroom tool, The Playground, we’re fostering carbon literacy and inspiring climate action amongst staff and students in educational settings across the UK. With the Department for Education’s Sustainability and Climate Change strategy setting out decarbonisation targets for schools in England, and many local authorities and multi-academy trusts declaring climate emergencies, it’s clear that collective action is essential, and this begins with education. Individual schools can make a big impact – but when many schools act together, the results are transformative.Â
Driving sector-wide climate action
We’re building the most comprehensive dataset on carbon emissions in the UK education sector. With more settings using the platform, we hope that very quickly our data will show areas that need to be addressed at scale and drive sector-wide climate action. This will paint a powerful picture for policy makers, the Department for Education, local authorities, and education leaders. We will use all our relationships and influence to bring about the biggest change possible, supporting the sector to maximise its carbon reduction potential.Â
