Healthy People, Healthy Planet: Active IQ reveals its new sustainability strategy

AT Active IQ we’re trying to be a more sustainable business – financially, operationally and environmentally.

We’re taking care of the first two already, but we now need to play our part in contributing to the global effort that constitutes the third.

That’s why we recently unveiled our new sustainability strategy called Healthy People, Healthy Planet. This is our plan to contribute to a healthier planet by exploring ways to pivot our business model to align with a more sustainable operation.

In 2003 our company began in the active leisure space with the goal to help people live healthier lives.

Today our goal has broadened to help the planet as well as its people.

Our new sustainability strategy transparently shows the current impact our business has on the environment in terms of carbon emissions.

Ultimately our goal is to be a carbon neutral organisation by 2024.

To help us on this journey we recently worked with Our Carbon to do a comprehensive analysis of our business operations and the impact it has on the environment.

We calculated that we had produced an estimated 207.46 tonnes of CO2e in 2019.

That’s roughly equivalent to flying from London to Dubai (and back) 85 times.

We improved in 2021, producing 103.67 tonnes, but that’s still roughly equivalent to flying from Paris to New York (and back) 63 times. We can do better.

Throughout this process one of the things we learned was that when we consider our emissions across the business, our head office played a significant role in our carbon footprint.

With our remote working practices now well-engrained across the business, we took a decision to move out of our Huntingdon office at the end of January, whilst using coworking and meeting spaces around the country, according to the needs of our nationwide team.

Huntingdon has been our headquarters for a number of years now, so we did not come to this decision lightly.

However, we believe it is a positive move to take to fully support our new strategy.

This decision will help us in our journey to become a carbon-neutral awarding and End-point Assessment organisation by the end of 2024.