Programme launched to help Norfolk businesses reach Net-Zero
The Business Climate Leaders programme is free to enter and aims to give tailored support.
Norfolk Chambers of Commerce has launched a programme to help local small and medium sized businesses reach Net-Zero carbon emissions.
Their Business Climate Leaders programme is free to enter, and aims to give tailored support to companies through the experiences of others.
Chris Sargisson is the CEO of the board of trade and creator of the scheme.
He told us that our local businesses currently have to face a range of issues alone: "The challenge that they've got, particularly in a post Covid world is time. They are really up against it in terms of being able to resource their actual organisation and being able to do the job that they have.
"Yet when it comes to the Climate Challenge, the onus is on every Small and Medium sized business to research what to do to tackle it."
He went on to say that learning from the experiences of others is the best way others can tackle the issue: "There are some organisations that absolutely get it and we want to know who they are.
"As we'll then be able to use those stories to help those ones who are struggling and say they don't get it. So we class ourselves as the experts at finding the experts."
Mr Sargisson went on to say that while many companies face their own individual issues, there's things everyone can do to reach the target: "One thing that's quite interesting, that I hear a lot about at the moment is how many organisations keep gazillions of files on their serves without going through a process of tidying them up.
"That's using up energy and if you can reduce the amount of files and archive some off then that uses less energy. So if everybody did that, it would make a big difference".
But he concluded by admitting that this scheme can't be successful without the help of others: "We want to make this a really big community. We'll put the effort in, but it helps us out a lot if its matched with others as well. We can't do this alone, although we are the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce, we're a small non-for-profit.
"The more people that can help with things such as venues along with experience and insight, then we want to have those conversations with them as soon as possible".
It all comes as the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow enters its final days.