Sustainability Slipped Down My To-Do List. Here's What Brought It Back.

I became Carbon Literate last year. I made my action pledges, started sharing what I'd learnt and had every intention of keeping the momentum going.

And then I got busy. Really busy.

Over the last year, Chivrall Bookkeeping has grown, my client workload has increased, and since September I've moved from working around three days a week to something much closer to full-time.

There have been new clients, new systems, new challenges and plenty of competing priorities.

Sustainability hasn't disappeared from my thinking. But has it been getting the attention I intended?

Probably not.

And today's webinar was a timely reminder.

A reminder about what we're actually saying

This morning I attended a FuturePlus ESG Upskill session, delivered alongside legal specialists Joelson, looking at what the EU's new environmental claims rules mean for business marketing.

The session focused on the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive, with its new rules applying from September 2026. The message was straightforward: businesses need to be careful about how they describe their environmental performance.

Words such as green, eco-friendly and sustainable can sound reassuring, but what do they actually mean? And can we demonstrate what we're claiming? The rules also address environmental labels, future sustainability promises and certain carbon-neutrality claims based on offsetting.

Although the EU rules aren't automatically applicable to every UK business, we already have the UK's Green Claims Code, which sets out the importance of accurate, clear and substantiated environmental claims.

What I took away from the session

For me, three things stood out.

1. Be specific about what you've actually done.

Rather than saying a business is sustainable, explain the particular choices, actions or improvements you're referring to.

2. Keep evidence of your progress.

If you're making a measurable claim, you should understand where the figure comes from and what it represents.

3. Separate achievements from ambitions.

There's nothing wrong with having a target you haven't reached yet. But an intention to improve isn't the same as an improvement already achieved.

That last point particularly resonated with me.

Because it reminded me of the pledges I made when I completed my Carbon Literacy training in July 2025. And I realised it was time to check in.

So, how have I actually been getting on?

One of my individual pledges was to reduce the environmental impact of my digital workspace. I had identified Google Workspace as something I could measure and set myself a target of reducing my monthly reported emissions from around 150g CO₂e to 125g CO₂e.

I started making changes. I've spent time removing unnecessary emails, unsubscribing from mailing lists and reviewing the software I use. I also disabled Google Chat because I wasn't using it.

But I'll admit that regular digital decluttering hasn't exactly become the consistent habit I'd hoped for. When business gets busy, clearing out old emails and files isn't usually the first thing on the list!

So today I went back to my figures.

What the numbers actually show

I've been collecting Google Workspace carbon footprint data since December 2024, which means I can now look at the trends.

Comparing February to September in 2025 and 2026, my average monthly reported emissions have remained remarkably similar.

• 2025: approximately 182g CO₂e per month.

• 2026: approximately 180g CO₂e per month.

So, have I achieved my original 125g target? No.

But looking at the individual services revealed something more interesting.

Gmail's reported emissions have fallen by approximately 24% over the comparable periods, while Google Chat's figures have dropped to virtually zero. Meanwhile, Google Meet and Calendar have increased.

That doesn't prove which of my changes caused the reductions, or exactly why other services have increased. Google's figures are estimates of allocated service emissions, not a direct measurement of the carbon saved by deleting an individual email.

But it does give me useful information.

The business behind the numbers has changed too

When I started monitoring these figures, Chivrall Ltd was a much smaller operation.

I'm now working more hours, supporting a growing business and using digital tools more extensively. I don't want to manipulate the figures to make myself feel better about missing a target. Total emissions still matter. But so does understanding the context.

If a business is doing considerably more work while keeping its digital footprint broadly stable, that's worth investigating.

I'm now considering tracking Google Workspace emissions alongside hours worked, so I can understand both the total impact and how efficiently the services are being used.

Neither measure tells the whole story on its own.

And importantly, Google Workspace is only part of my digital footprint. Other software providers have their own environmental impacts, which aren't captured in these figures.

The next opportunity might not be deleting anything

One particularly interesting finding was the increase in Google Meet emissions.

I use Google Meet for client calls, but I also use Fathom to capture meeting recordings, transcripts and notes. That has prompted a new question: am I keeping recordings or generating information I don't actually need? Would audio-only recording be sufficient for some meetings? Do I need video enabled every time? Are any recordings being duplicated?

It's about making the technology work better, not creating another administrative job in the name of sustainability.

Progress, not a perfect scorecard

Looking back at my original Carbon Literacy pledges, I haven't completed everything I intended. But I haven't done nothing either.

I've made changes to my banking arrangements, encouraged conversations about the environmental impact of finance, reviewed my digital systems, removed an unused service and continued supporting reuse through my leadership of our school's pre-loved uniform shop.

I've also continued to learn.

And perhaps that's the important part.

The original target was something I set with the knowledge and circumstances I had at the time. Now I've got more data, a different working pattern and a better understanding of what I can realistically influence.

I don't think the answer is to abandon the pledge, or to pretend I've achieved it.

It's to review it and decide what makes sense next.

A small reset for November

I'm not going to create an enormous new sustainability action plan.

There are enough things competing for my attention already.

Instead, I'm going to focus on a few practical steps:

• Review meeting recording and transcribing options.

• Continue monitoring my Google Workspace emissions, with some context around business activity.

• Look for opportunities to reduce unnecessary digital clutter as part of my normal working processes.

• Keep sharing what I'm learning, including the things that don't go quite to plan.

  
  

Today's webinar was supposed to be about environmental claims in marketing.

For me, it also became a reminder to revisit my own commitments.

And maybe that's something we all need occasionally.

Not another reason to feel guilty about what we haven't achieved, but an opportunity to look at what we've done, what we've learnt and what we want to do next.

Sustainability hasn't fallen off my radar. It's just been competing with everything else involved in running a small business.

And today was a good reminder to bring it back into focus.

Useful resources: The Carbon Literacy Project, FuturePlus and the UK Green Claims Code.