As part of our ongoing Plan-Net-Zero sustainability commitment, we’re pleased to share this Copart Case Study, which demonstrates how the implementation of Carbon Literacy has changed our organisation and the behaviour of our teammates.
Company Information
Copart UK Ltd is a global leader in online vehicle remarketing and recycling, providing services to the insurance, trade, accident management, automotive fleet, finance, and rental sectors.
Copart’s Carbon Literacy journey began on 31st January 2022, supporting our ongoing Plan-Net-Zero sustainability commitment.
Before
New starters were required to complete an ‘Environmental Awareness’ eLearning module, and our Performance, Quality and Risk team (PQR) had environmental risk as part of their agenda. However, it wasn’t felt that our teammates were encouraged to make environmentally positive choices.
As a result, an Environmental, Social and Governance committee was created with our Senior Management Team (SMT) to focus on our environmental agenda. Plan-Net-Zero was developed to give us a clear path to follow and motivate teammates to make positive environmental changes. The Carbon Literacy Project accreditation programme gave us structured targets to achieve this goal.
During
We used the Automotive toolkit designed by Autotrader, and approved by the Carbon Literacy Project, to get our journey started. Our CEO had obtained her certification via Autotrader, and we had quickly achieved our bronze accreditation.
Using the automotive toolkit meant we could quickly start our journey towards silver, to reach our 15% workforce target by the end of 2022.
We invited all senior/people managers, and our sales teams to virtual sessions. With teammates nationwide, this reduced the need for travel. To maintain engagement levels and minimise business disruption, the 8-hour session was split over two consecutive days.
Initial sessions had virtual breakout rooms for teammates to discuss ideas together when developing personal and group actions, but this approach meant many people wrote similar actions. In the next sessions, we arranged for individual work on each action, shared to the group later. This kept teammates engaged, focused, and reassured they were on the right track.
After
Introducing carbon literacy training has certainly influenced positive mindset changes to many of our teammates, with just two examples of this below.
Many projects are being implemented from ideas generated during the training sessions, including a Hydro-Vegetable oil alternative fuel for our loaders, and changing a paper-based internal transportation process to fully digital (which is being trialled across a region in the UK, with the intention to go nationwide).
We are now including positive environmental action as part of our Performance Review process, where we have linked our environmental aims with our company value of ‘Act with Integrity’.
During the training sessions we also encourage teammates to live the value of ‘Challenge the Norm’ to make suggestions to improve our environmental impact.
Our ‘Ask our CEO’ function on our internal communications platform regularly sees suggestions from teammates being discussed, and often implemented, at senior management level.
Our next aim is to achieve the gold accreditation next year, where we will focus on delivering the training to 50% of our teammates.
We will continue to use our internal communications platform to post sustainability focused blogs and success stories to keep our workforce engaged, as well as keeping carbon literacy on meeting agendas across the company.
To achieve gold, we are exploring options to work alongside Copart in Germany and the US, and in collaboration with our customers.