our impact

What’s this?

This is the story of the impact that As It Should Be has had during our 2022/23 and 2023/24 accounting years. It tells of the company’s journey, its goals and the progress made towards them, and the successes and challenges along the way.

Contents

From our founder

Photo of Jon stood in a sunny spot leaning against a large redwood tree and smiling; he’s wearing a t-shirt with wind turbines on under a navy blue tweed blazer
Jon Gibbins, Founder, As It Should Be Ltd

Thank you for taking a moment to read our 2022–2024 impact report, the first we have published. I’ll start by being honest: getting here hasn’t been easy.

As It Should Be was born in the autumn of 2021, an evolution of my previous company founded in 2013. New directions for the business had been brewing in my mind in recent years, and I spent 18 months developing these thoughts alongside client work into a new form. Personally, it’s the start of a move from “me” to “we”. For the business, it’s a refresh and a realignment, with refined purpose and vision, and a new name, brand and website.

Many people supported me along the way – our team, advisors, clients, suppliers, and friends – and I’m still incredibly grateful to them all. It felt important to thank these people and to celebrate the official launch of As It Should Be, so we did. We funded the planting of over 1,000 trees and a variety of climate impact projects around the world, kickstarting the positive impact of our work.

I was particularly proud to launch the business as a Certified B Corporation®, especially achieving a considerable score for a small business in its first certification. You can read more of the story of how we became a B Corp and what it means for us in this report.

The report is the result of our first time analysing the information we’ve gathered and openly publishing what we’ve found. We should actually be publishing our second impact report, but we needed to put some things on hold during 2023. Family illness and bereavements meant that work took a back seat for parts of the year, and revenue and work in the pipeline took a hit. You can see this reflected in the numbers in the report. So, this report covers both 2022/23 and 2023/24.

Producing this report has allowed us to gain an understanding of how we’re performing, take time to review our goals and adjust objectives. For us, performance is not only about profits or return on investment; it’s about the impact our business has on society and our shared planet. For our business to be sustainable, that means that we must have a net positive effect on people and our planet, as well as being financially viable. For our business to be good, that means that we do some tangible good in the world as well as providing financial security for everyone who works with us.

It’s for this reason we have made commitments to make certain minimum financial contributions to environmental nonprofits and social impact projects. As 1% for the Planet members, we commit to giving 1% of our revenue to environmental non-profits working hard to protect our planet. As Pledge 1% members, we commit to giving 1% of our revenue to improve people’s lives. Since we give a percentage of our revenue, our impact will grow as we grow and our revenue increases.

We’ve worked with more values-aligned clients, reduced parts of our carbon footprint and resource use, prepared the groundwork for becoming a responsible employer, and done a fair bit of good for our local, national and international communities. I’m proud of what has been achieved so far, and despite operating in a tumultuous economy, I am confident that the company is resilient enough to weather these storms, and continue to grow in a meaningful way.

While it’s been a challenging couple of years personally, it’s also been very rewarding professionally, despite challenges there, too. The 2023/24 year has been a particularly challenging time with many tightening budgets, and small businesses in particular really feeling the pinch. Luckily, I’ve continued to meet and work with more really interesting people doing meaningful work, and my only wish for my work in 2024 is that it continues with more of the same.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank some people:

  • Will Andrews and Bridget Petty, who did a great job knitting this report together from various strands
  • Dee Radford, working away behind the scenes to help me keep this ship on a steady course
  • our clients and partners for being a pleasure to work with
  • our network of freelance specialists for their support and the value they bring to our projects
  • all our friends and families for supporting us

And finally, thank you for your interest in what we’re doing, and for joining me on the journey.

Jon, handwritten

Jon Gibbins
Founder, As It Should Be Ltd

Introduction

This report explores the social and environmental impact that As It Should Be has had during our 2022/23 and 2023/24 accounting years. It states the goals and objectives we’ve set, and provides an update on the progress made, comparing information gathered for these accounting years against previous years.

As a Certified B Corporation®, we are legally required to report our social and environmental impact each year. It’s a commitment that’s embedded in our Articles of Association, lodged at Companies House. But we’ve come to consider impact reporting an important part of the process of reflecting on successes and challenges, and an opportunity to review whether our objectives remain the same. We are committed to openly communicating the impacts our company has on people and our planet, warts and all – celebrating the positive and acknowledging the negative.

The purpose of reporting our impact is to:

  • Uphold our commitment to working with transparency
  • Increase our understanding of what is driving the company’s social and environmental impact
  • Set targets and identify actions to improve impact

One of our goals for the future is to begin incorporating our social and environmental reporting as part of our annual financial accounts, and submit them together to Companies House. For this reason, our impact reporting covers the same period as our financial accounting year, which runs from the start of June to the end of May every year.

We’ve been gathering data for a few years now, starting with measuring our greenhouse gas emissions in our 2019/20 accounting year. This is why some of the data we present in this report references 2019/20 as our base year, while we began measuring other aspects in later years.

Since we have some historical data, we can draw comparisons to previous years to better understand trends, what we are doing well, and where improvements can be made to maintain impact while running a sustainable business. And, to stay true to our core value of being open and transparent, we intend to retrospectively publish impact reports for previous years so that everyone can join us on our impact journey from the start.

The insights gained in producing this report are critical in guiding our direction and decisions. We hope that you value these insights, as we do.

About the company

As It Should Be is a digital accessibility and sustainability consultancy based in the UK. We help digital teams design and build more accessible and sustainable digital products and services by providing advice, coaching and training.

We exist to create a digital world that meets the needs of all people while working in harmony with our environment and the natural world.

Digital as it should be.

The company is currently a micro enterprise with 1 full-time employee, the company’s founder, Jon Gibbins. He works alongside a network of talented freelance specialists and consultants to provide more value to client projects.

Proud to be a B Corp

Branded nature themed illustration featuring the Certified B Corporation® logo

We’re a Certified B Corporation®.

You may have heard of B Corp, but what does the ‘B’ stand for? It stands for ‘Benefit’ – a company that’s legally obliged to balance profit with purpose… or as we see it, a business as it should be.

B Corps use business as a force for good, and are certified by B Lab for meeting some of the highest standards of environmental and social performance around.

Discover what it means to be a B Corp in this video:

Our B Impact Score

  • 108.4 overall B Impact Score
  • 80 Qualifies for B Corp Certification
  • 50.9 Median Score for Ordinary Businesses

We were awarded B Corp status in March 2022, and we were really proud to have achieved an overall B Impact Score of 108.4, a considerable achievement for a small business in its first certification. It’s over double the median score for non-B Corp businesses, and 34% higher than businesses in the service sector. For us, it validated our core values and the work we put into integrating these values into our work.

The score that a company can attain depends on several factors, ranging from its size and industry to its business model and operational factors. Typically, the B Impact Score is spread across five impact areas: Governance, Workers, Community, Environment, and Customers. As a micro enterprise with one employee, the company is not assessed under the workers impact area despite working with a network of freelance specialists and does not have an associated score. While we acknowledge that our company is set up in a way that will lead to higher scores in certain areas, there is an equal focus on making improvements in all areas.

As the company grows and matures, our B Impact Score serves as a baseline to measure our improvements against. If you’d like to find out how we scored in each impact area, take a look at our B Corp company profile.

Our journey to B Corp

Our journey to B Corp began back in 2020, when we began measuring some aspects of our social and environmental impact, despite not being formally certified for another two years.

We didn’t set out to certify the company as a B Corp. Indeed, the company’s founder, Jon, didn’t think that his “company of one” could achieve it. He was looking to make his business better: to find more ways to use it as a force for good, and grow it in a meaningful way. The B Impact Assessment seemed like the most mature framework for this, measuring impact and setting goals for improvement across five areas: Governance, Workers, Community, Environment, and Customers.

Our Certified B Corporation® plaque reads 'We are proud to meet high standards of environmental and social performance' – Certified in 2022

It took about 8 months from starting our certification journey to being awarded our B Corp certification. We had done some of the relevant work towards the practices and policies that supported our certification already. A lot of spreadsheets were involved!

Our ambition is to have a net positive impact in everything we do. B Corp certification has guided us in developing tools to measure and monitor our impact. It’s no small task for any business to put systems in place to actively measure what’s important to the business and its stakeholders, and then analyse the data gathered to inform decisions on future goals and actions. It’s important to take an approach of continuous improvement, especially for a micro enterprise like ours. This echoes one of our core principles: progress over perfection.

Governance

This section is about our mission and how we engage with stakeholders. As a micro enterprise with one employee, we can safely say that our founder, Jon, is fully committed to operating with transparency and integrity. While other organisations have many governance layers, that’s not the case here and the highest corporate oversight is a given.

Responsible business practices, social impact and environmental sustainability are embedded into the fabric of our company. We adopt the responsible business principles developed by Blueprint for Better Business, which form part of the company’s Articles of Association, along with a statement of our purpose and a commitment to have a material positive impact on society and the environment. As a Certified B Corporation®, we are also legally required to prepare and circulate an impact report for each financial year.

Social and environmental impact are always core considerations in the decisions we make, because we believe that these are important to the success and profitability of our business. We treat our social and environmental impact as a primary measure of success and prioritise it, even in cases where it may not drive profitability.

When we seek people to work with – whether it’s clients, partners, suppliers, or workers – we make clear our values and approach. These are also clearly communicated on our website.

Highlights

Since 2020, we have used environmental, social and governance factors to research and assess our suppliers. The information we gather in our procurement process is used to inform our supplier engagement and decision making. We check supplier websites for policies related to ethics, sustainability and other responsible business practices. We check for evidence of third-party certifications, such as B Corps, 1% for the Planet, Planet Mark, Fairtrade, ISO standards, etc. We also research companies for ethical concerns, using sources such as Ethical Consumer or Glassdoor, where employees provide insight into the companies they work for.

Sometimes information isn’t readily available, so we ask suppliers directly using a survey. This attempts to gain better understanding of aspects such as diversity, gender pay gap, responsible business practices, certifications, and commitments to social and environmental impact. We’ve found this practice very helpful in our decision making around suppliers.

In 2021, we made a decision to move away from Hiscox Insurance as a supplier due to their well publicised poor handling of COVID-19 insurance claims. We switched to using an independent insurance broker, who insures us with Beazley, who are committed to responsible business practices.

In 2022, we expanded our approach to procurement to include assessment of diversity within a potential supplier’s leadership and workforce, as well as their geographic location, helping us to support local suppliers as appropriate.

Goals

Goal 1 – Publish our first annual impact report

Completed! You’re reading it.

After some delays due to business and personal pressures on the founder this was not achieved in our 2022/23 accounting year as planned. However, this report looks to summarise two years and deliver the impact report in a proportionate way.

This is a reflection of being a very small business and the pressure on the founder to achieve a balance between client work, running the business, and the additional work required for monitoring and reporting the impact of the business. For many small organisations this is an ongoing challenge. Reporting is important and improved scheduling or identifying ways to deliver this report annually is a corporate commitment.

Goal 2 – Implement an ethical screening policy for selecting clients and projects

Partially complete.

We screen our clients for fit as part of our sales process, focussing the majority of our efforts on working with organisations that have a positive impact on the world. With a similar approach to our supplier assessment, values and ethical considerations form part of our decision making when qualifying clients and work leads. We are open with our approach to selecting clients, as described in our business ethics policy.

In 2020/21, we calculated that 17.9% of our sales came from customers that we feel are not aligned with our values. This insight made us keen to reduce this number, and increase the percentage of values-aligned businesses and non-profits that we work with.

Alignment of work projects with core values
Year2020/20212021/20222022/20232023/2024
Values-aligned sales38.6%18.1%6.9%11.2%
Non-aligned sales17.9%7.60%4.4%

While our business decisions are guided by our values, due to economic pressures, we’ve sometimes had to take work that is not a good fit. We are now keen to improve these scores further, and do our best to avoid doing work that benefits bad actors who are continuing to prioritise economic growth over the needs of our planet.

Formalising a screening policy would ensure fair and consistent judgement is used for all potential clients and projects. Publishing this and having it available for others to access and use allows potential clients to understand how they will be assessed, as well as highlighting what we value most as a company. It will also give others the opportunity to follow a similar process to help improve their own screening policies.

Next year’s goals

We will:

  1. Publish an impact report for the 2024/25 period
  2. Formalise an Ethical screening policy for selecting work

Workers

At this time, the company has no other employees other than the founder. As the business grows, we are committed to treating our employees fairly and responsibly. We aim to provide a work environment that:

  • Treats all workers equally and with dignity and respect
  • Provides opportunities for personal development
  • Attracts a diverse range of workers, representing all walks of life

We are committed to wiping out slavery and human trafficking in our business and its supply chains, which is detailed further in the modern slavery statement on our website.

We’re a Disability Confident Committed company, and as we grow, it’s important to us that our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible, and that we adapt to our team members and their individual needs and preferences. We adopt a Workstyle way of working, enabling people to work in a way that suits them.

We will ensure that our workforce has a net positive environmental impact through the carbon impact projects we fund through Ecologi.

Customers

Here we explore the ways in which we serve our customers by examining the value we bring to our customers, how we engage with customers and respond to feedback, our marketing practices, and the quality of our services. This area also highlights products or services designed to address specific social issues – in our case, disability inclusion.

As It Should Be was founded on responsible business principles with purpose at its core. These principles – based on the Blueprint for Better Business – are woven into the fabric of our company, our company’s Articles of Association, and include being honest and fair with customers and suppliers.

We believe in fair marketing and have made a commitment to The Ethical Move, a pledge to be transparent, responsible and honest in our marketing.

Highlights

In 2022, we began using a discount pricing model to make our services more affordable to small businesses and began offering discounted rates for B Corp certified businesses (10% discount) and non-profit organisations (20% discount).

In 2023, we formalised our discounted rates for small businesses and partner organisations to make our services more accessible and reflect the value we gain from our partnerships. These rates are around 30% less than our full rates.

We aim to deliver a high quality service that matches our client expectations. We gather feedback from clients that helps us to calculate a Net Promoter Score, which provides an indicator for measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty. The results of our client satisfaction surveys have been very positive, indicating our work is having the intended impact.

Client satisfaction and loyalty
Year2022/20232023/2024
Average score9.83 / 10100
Net Promoter Score10 / 10100

Our clients

In 2022/23, we were delighted to engage and work with our first B Corp certified client: Wholegrain Digital. And in 2023/24, we were lucky enough to add two more B Corp clients to our client list: Ticket Tailor and the Academy of Executive Coaching. We look forward to what 2024/25 holds.

Client types
Year2022/20232023/2024
B Corp companies12
Non-profits and charities41
Government organisations12

What our clients say

As It Should Be lived up to their name and delivered accessibility training exactly as it should be - enjoyable, informative and tailored to our needs. I'd highly recommend them!

Tom Greenwood, Wholegrain Digital, March 2023

Incredibly professional, knowledgeable and helpful! Felt like a helping hand, and really invested in educating the team. The output was in-depth, prioritised, well reasoned and actionable.

Ollie Williams, Bud Financial, May 2023

I have worked with Jon for the last three years on digitally focussed projects and bids for large UK clients. I cannot recommend him highly enough for his collaborative, inclusive and sustainable approaches. He adds value by being excellent at what he does, and also by making it clearer what real value actually is.

Dr Claire Williams, Williams Consultants Ltd, October 2023

Other beneficiaries

During the 2023/24 year, we also began tracking the number of individuals and communities we reach with our training, talks at events, volunteering, and work projects. For our work projects, we gather data by asking our clients for estimates of how many customers, users or members they have, or how many monthly visitors their website receives. While our community impact is reported later in this report, we are yet to fully incorporate such information about our customers into our reporting.

Next year’s goals

We will:

  1. Improve how we track the number of individuals, communities, businesses, nonprofits and governments reached with our coaching, training, talks, volunteering and other work projects. In particular, we’d like to better understand how people are impacted by the improvements we make to the accessibility and sustainability of our clients’ websites and mobile apps, and integrate this into our reporting.
  2. Track projects and organisations, to monitor progress towards increasing work with like-minded/shared value organisations.
  3. Implement a subsidisation model for pricing, assigning low-cost or pro bono days.
  4. Actively collaborate with other B Corp certified micro enterprises to build a community of peer-to-peer support and action.
  5. Continue to record client satisfaction and maintain the same high standard of the company to date, aiming for over 8 out of 10 average.

Environment

This section looks at the company’s environmental management practices and our impact on air, climate, water, land, and biodiversity. It explores the impact of facilities, emissions, and resource and energy use, including transportation and supply chains.

We continue to be committed to 1% for the Planet, committing to giving at least 1% of our annual revenue to environmental non-profits working hard to protect our planet. In addition to this commitment with 1% for the Planet, we also make monthly donations to Ecologi to support carefully selected carbon reduction projects and planting trees worldwide.

Our carbon footprint calculations include the direct impact of the company’s operations (Scope 1) and that of indirect emissions under our control (Scope 2). We have been working to improve our carbon accounting to include a measure of the indirect emissions in our supply chain (Scope 3).

Highlights

As a small remote-first, digital-first company with no business premises, the company’s environmental impact is comparatively small. Our focus has been on reducing our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as much as possible, alongside other actions.

In 2022, we engaged business sustainability consultancy Future Leap to help us improve our approach to carbon accounting using a grant from the UK Government Community Renewal Fund. This gave us greater confidence in our carbon accounting and better understanding of our carbon footprint, which new measures to help us measure the indirect emissions in our supply chain.

We also declared a climate and nature emergency, publicly expressing our commitment to hold ourselves accountable to meaningful and positive impact. We also published our first SME Climate Commitment report in the 2022/23 accounting year.

We officially launched our new name and brand in March 2023. Our new website was built using sustainable web design principles and optimisations to keep the carbon emissions associated with it as low as possible. This includes hosting the website with a green web hosting provider that is powered by 100% renewable energy, Kualo green hosting. The website achieves a rating of A+ on the Website Carbon Rating System, making it greener than 95% of web pages globally.

To celebrate our brand launch, we planted 1,000 trees in mangrove forests in Mozambique and funded a selection of climate impact projects:

2022/2023

Celebrating our launch, plus monthly donations:

£1,749 donated, funding the planting of 1,182 trees and contributing towards 22 climate impact projects, offsetting 109 tonnes CO2e emissions avoided

2023/2024

We continued our monthly donations:

£185 donated, funding the planting of 96 trees and contributing towards 8 climate impact projects, offsetting 8.52 tonnes CO2ee emissions avoided

Carbon accounting

The greenhouse gas accounting is based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s corporate and value chain standards.

The GHG Protocol defines emissions in three scopes:

  • Scope 1: The company’s direct emissions from vehicles, combustion, processes, or leakages
  • Scope 2: The company’s indirect emissions (electricity, heating, cooling) from energy purchased and consumed
  • Scope 3: Greenhouse gas emissions that occur upstream and downstream in the company’s value chain, as a consequence of the company’s operations

Total greenhouse gas emissions are quantified in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2ee), which take into consideration that different greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, methane, etc.) have different global warming factors.

Our greenhouse gas emission figures are calculated using the UK Government conversion factors.

Goals

As we are only a micro enterprise, working out of the founder’s home, reductions to our carbon footprint have been our primary focus.

As a household we fitted solar panels in January 2021, and in October 2021 we joined national trials of vehicle-to-grid / vehicle-to-home (V2X) technology, which allows our electric vehicle to be used as battery storage for the home (including the home office). These decisions were made as a household, but have played a positive part in our home-based business being able to use home-generated renewable energy to reduce bills and our reliance on the grid.

Goal 1 – Reduce greenhouse gas emissions and water use

Ongoing.

We set ourselves a target to decrease our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water use by 5% each year when compared to our 2019/20 base year. We have been successful in our GHG reductions, massively exceeding our targets.

Here we show how we have measured our greenhouse gas emissions and water use with a view to meet these target reductions.

Scope 1 and 2 emissions

Scope 1 accounts for emissions that come directly from our operations, which includes any business travel and gas heating. Scope 2 accounts for emissions from purchased electricity.

Our goal for travel is to use low carbon transport for all business travel. Being a remote-first company, we very much work in the digital world. This means that we don’t have a daily commute, and our client meetings are normally held online. The vast majority of our business travel is by bus or train.

We use a combination of infrared heating panels and gas central heating to heat our home office, and have installed draught proofing measures. Our gas supply currently comes from 100% biomethane green gas sources.

For the 2022/2023 accounting year, 100% of our electricity came from low impact renewable sources. At the end of the 2023/2024 accounting year, a change of supplier may mean that some of our electricity supply now comes from hydro, which changes our energy mix and its impact. We are currently researching the energy mix of the new supplier.

Our Scope 1 and 2 emissions are exceeding our targets comfortably, but we are keen to better understand our Scope 3 emissions moving forward.

Change in Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions
Year2019/20202020/20212021/20222022/20232023/2024
Scope 1 emissions (tonnes CO2e)0.31530.3186,
Increased 1%
0.0103,
Decreased 97%
0.0003,
Decreased 97%
0.0004,
Increased 33%
Scope 2 emissions (tonnes CO2e)0.23990.1765,
Decreased 26%
0.2352,
Increased 33%
0.1783,
Decreased 24%
0.2717,
Increased 52%
Target reduction of Scope 1 and 2 since base year5%10%15%20%
Actual reduction of Scope 1 and 2 since base year
Decreased 11%
Decreased 56%
Decreased 68%
Decreased 51%

We note that some of the figures in our Scope 1 emissions may not be an accurate representation of our actual usage. Between July 2021 and September 2022, our energy supplier had been estimating our gas usage, which had resulted in an over-estimation of around 2,500 kWh of gas over a period of 15 months. This was corrected in October 2022, potentially causing a skew in our usage data.

We intend to improve the accuracy of these figures in the future, and review the historical data we have on how energy is used in our home office locations. One of the problems we have in measuring our Scope 1 and 2 emissions is that the electricity used by our main home office is difficult to separate from home use. We currently attribute a percentage of home energy use to business based on the number of home rooms and amount of time attributed to business purposes, but this is not an accurate representation of business use. As an example of this, an electric vehicle is charged at the premises, which is not used for business purposes, yet it is responsible for a large and varying proportion of the electricity use at the premises.

Scope 3 emissions

During the 2023/24 year, we began estimating the impact of supplies and services purchased by the business, with help from Future Leap, a carbon and net-zero consultancy based near us in Bristol.

Scope 3 emissions are mainly a measurement of emissions in our supply chain. They are therefore more difficult to estimate and based on average emissions by industry. Scope 3 emissions are also more difficult for us to control.

The numbers in the table below show that our Scope 3 emissions have increased each year, which we put down to the growth of the company and the associated purchase of assets and services from suppliers.

Change in Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions
Year2019/20202020/20212021/20222022/20232023/2024
Scope 3 emissions (tonnes CO2e)0.700.86,
Increased 23%
0.88,
Increased 2%
1.34,
Increased 52%
2.17,
Increased 62%
Target reduction of Scope 3 since base year5%10%15%20%
Actual reduction of Scope 3 since base year
Increased 23%
Increased 26%
Increased 91%
Increased 210%
Total greenhouse gas emissions

Taking into account the increased emissions from Scope 3 reported above, unsurprisingly our total greenhouse gas emissions have also increased since our base year. Certainly, better understanding our Scope 3 emissions is necessary to make progress towards our goal of halving our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Change in total greenhouse gas emissions
Year2019/20202020/20212021/20222022/20232023/2024
Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions (tonnes CO2e)1.261.361.131.522.44
Target reduction since base year5%10%15%20%
Actual reduction since base year
Increased 8%
Decreased 10%
Increased 21%
Increased 95%
Carbon offsets

Carbon offsets won’t solve the climate emergency, but it’s useful to understand our net impact. Our approach to carbon offsetting is to not just put back what we take, but to give back and be planet positive – we want to help regenerate the climate and our natural world.

We’re not planting trees to offset our carbon emissions. We plant them to protect the future of our planet for generations to come.

Jon Gibbins, Founder, As It Should Be

Every month, we fund a range of carbon reduction projects that are certified by Gold Standard and Verified Carbon Standard through Ecologi. A large part of this effort involves planting trees, but planting trees is not enough. We also support other climate solution projects through Ecologi, which include renewable energy (mostly wind, but increasingly solar as well), gas capture, avoided deforestation, and solar cooking stoves.

If you decide to sign up to be climate positive as well, by using the link above as a referral link, Ecologi will plant 30 new trees in our forest.

Overall, we have a net positive carbon impact each year, as we currently offset more emissions than we emit. The table below shows our net greenhouse gas emissions, taking into account the carbon offsets we have funded.

Note: In 2022/23, we decided to avoid skewing our year-on-year data by deliberately excluding the 100 tonnes of carbon offsets that formed part of a one-off contribution celebrating the company’s brand launch.

Net greenhouse gas emissions through carbon offsets
Year2019/20202020/20212021/20222022/20232023/2024
Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions (tonnes CO2e)1.261.361.131.522.44
GHGs offset (tonnes CO2e)04.417.349 (+100)8.52
Net GHGs total (tonnes CO2e)
1.26
−3.04
−16.21
−7.48
−6.08
Carbon intensity

We measure carbon intensity following the method used in B Corp certification, which is a measure of Scope 1 and 2 emissions as tonnes of CO2e per million US dollars in revenue. The figure should be below 100, and below 20 is a good level to achieve.

We put the increased figure shown below for 2022/2023 down to the reduced revenue we saw in that year, otherwise our overall carbon intensity is decreasing.

Carbon intensity
Year2019/20202020/20212021/20222022/20232023/2024
Revenue ($M)0.0222380.0365070.0371060.0183390.057819
Scope 1 and 2 (tonnes CO2e/$M)24.9713.566.629.744.71
Scope 1 and 2 including offsets (tonnes CO2e/$M)24.97Below 0Below 0Below 0Below 0
Water use

After an initial increase in water use due to the lockdowns introduced during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, our reduction in the use of the water supply has started to align with our targets.

Change in water use
Year2019/20202020/20212021/20222022/20232023/2024
Water used (litres)16,97219,336,
Increased 14%
16,033,
Decreased 17%
15,547,
Decreased 3%
14,476,
Decreased 7%
Target reduction since base year5%10%15%20%
Actual reduction since base year
Increased 14%
Decreased 6%
Decreased 8%
Decreased 15%

As our business water use is shared with a family household, the calculations use amortised amounts that attribute use of home office as a fair portion of the total household bill. We will continue to seek a reduction to achieve the targets. We have continued to fit more household rainwater harvesting storage to reduce the amount of main water being used in the garden.

Since we have not yet met our water reduction target, we will review our water use and objectives over the next year.

Goal 2 – Half our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030

Progress has been made here.

In the 2021/22 reporting year, we achieved a 56% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions relative to our base year of 2019/20. We are continuing to improve our carbon accounting, and look for new ways to reduce our emissions. In particular, we need to continue reviewing our suppliers and their services for further Scope 3 reductions.

Next year’s goals

We will:

  • Improve the accuracy of our carbon accounting in measuring the actual electricity usage of the business so that we can better understand our Scope 2 emissions
  • Work on better understanding our Scope 3 emissions in order to reach net-zero. Having effectively reduced Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions, we will be looking for ways to reduce our Scope 3 emissions by:
    • Reviewing suppliers and their services for associated carbon emissions
    • Continuing to buy refurbished capital assets wherever possible
    • Extending the life of existing capital assets as much as possible
  • Review our water use and establish a target appropriate for a home office
  • Start monitoring waste production from business operations
  • Continue to financially support the planting of trees and carbon avoidance projects through Ecologi

Community

This section reports how the company engages with and benefits the communities we operate in and source from. It covers diversity, equity, inclusion, economic impact, civic engagement and charitable giving.

We look to engage and collaborate with other small and micro enterprises to consider how they might incorporate B Corp values into their work life.

As a signatory of the Prompt Payment Code, we are committed to timely payment of our suppliers, which includes our network of freelance specialists.

We generally pay invoices when we receive them. When it’s not possible to pay an invoice immediately, we aim to pay all SMEs within 14 days of receipt, and all invoices are paid within 30 days.

As Pledge 1% members, we have committed to giving 1% of our annual revenue to initiatives that improve people’s lives.

In 2022/23, we donated time to the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) to talk to town planning professionals about the importance of digital accessibility, and to Weston College to talk to their students about Corporate Social Responsibility, career paths, passion and purpose.

In September 2023, the Sustainable Web Design Community Group at the World Wide Web Consortium published a draft of new Web Sustainability Guidelines, which are inspired by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These guidelines are being developed to provide a new standard and supporting guidance for making the digital world more sustainable, and we are proud to have our founder, Jon, as an active member of the community group.

Standing at more than 300 pages, our friends at Mightybytes and Wholegrain Digital created the SustainableWebDesign.org website to be a helpful resource for designers, web developers, marketers and product managers to explore and learn about the Web Sustainability Guidelines, and unravel the many dimensions to making digital better for our planet and all people. So, we were delighted and honoured to have the opportunity to work with them, volunteering our time to contribute our skills and experience to help make this supporting resource more accessible in the lead up to publishing the draft guidelines.

Highlights

We pride ourselves on donations of both money and time (including pro-bono work) to various organisations and good causes. Over the past 4 years we have donated £7,611 to environmental and social causes, provided an additional £4,949 worth of work as in-kind donations, and volunteered 147 hours.

The table below breaks down the annual figures for the reporting period. The unstable economy has not been easy for anybody recently, and the donations of money and time that we’ve been able to commit to have varied as paid client work has needed to be proportionately prioritised. You will see this reflected in the figures in the table.

Work done on raising the profile of the business in the business community and regional resulted in As It Should Be being named as a top business to watch.

In November 2023, we were hailed as one of the top 10 most eco-friendly digital agencies to work with in 2024. The founder of EcoPing, Dryden Williams, applauded our work for our values, passion, environmental awareness, design style and digital sustainability skills:

Making sure that the companies you work with share your values is a great feeling. A lot of the time we find the builder’s house is the last to be built. These 10 wonderful environmentally conscious agencies certainly buck the trend and have wonderful grand design style properties.

Not only are their websites brilliant examples of sustainable websites, but their passion and skill are visible in each of their client work.

Dryden Williams, EcoPing

We were then honoured to be included in Green Tech South West’s top 10 Bristol green techs to follow in 2024:

Historically, the Bristol region has always been a place of tremendous invention and ingenuity, it’s really great to see that continuing. We’re excited to bring you a selection of local pioneers using technology in very innovative ways to address the huge issue of climate change. Please check them out, support and follow!

Green Tech South West

Our founder, Jon, has volunteered his time in a number of different ways. This includes attending events around inclusive recruitment at Weston College, speaking about accessibility and sustainability on expert panels and at local events, and tree planting in the local community. However, due to an unstable economy making it necessary to focus on client projects over voluntary work during 2023/24, the figures for this year show a significant drop in volunteer hours.

Donations and volunteering
Year2021/20222022/20232023/2024
Volunteer hours (time)374116
Money donated£2,081£3,012£2,063
In-kind donations£1,246£438£344
% of revenue donated11.3%23.3%5.3%
% for People5.5%2.1%1.8%
% for the Planet5.8%9.8%3.5%
% other0%11.4%0%
Revenue£29,394£14,798£45,397

During the 2023/24 year, we began tracking the number of communities and individuals we reach with talks at events and through volunteering. This past year, there has been less time available for such activities in our communities, which is reflected in the numbers reported below.

Community activities and beneficiaries
Year2022/20232023/2024
Number of talks / events41
Individuals attending talks8812
Communities reached42

Next year’s goals

We will:

  • Attend and speak at more community events on digital accessibility and sustainability
  • Connect more with the disability community, especially people who are keen to work in the digital sector, or who have a passion for climate action
  • Develop and promote free resources to help creators of digital content and products with accessibility and sustainability
  • Review the social media platforms that we use and consider shutting down the company’s presence on platforms that do not match our values
  • Improve the company’s procurement procedure and use our supplier ESG assessment to better understand how we can work with suppliers in our community

To the future

Delivering the impact report for 2022/23 and 2023/24 has been an important opportunity to reflect on what has been achieved, what has gone well, and what we need to do to do better. It has given the opportunity to establish measurable and specific goals for the months ahead. The business is taking steps in the right direction – we just need to keep moving forward.

Our purpose and mission, published on our website, sets out to make the digital world as it should be – better for all people and for our planet.

We believe in a world that’s for everyone. To achieve this, we need a just society and a liveable planet.

We exist to create a digital world that meets the needs of all people while working in harmony with our environment and the natural world.

Digital as it should be.

We help great teams make the digital world better for all people and for our planet. We do this by embedding knowledge, establishing sustainable strategies and providing support that help them to design and build digital products and services that don’t exclude people or cost the planet.

It continues to articulate the values and integrity that we hold true in the work we do every day, whether it’s delivering services, building skills in teams, or taking our work to the wider community to share the approach we take. We set ambitious goals and work hard to reach them, and we will continue in our approach of valuing progress over perfection to have a net positive impact on all people and our planet.

Join us in creating a better digital future

If you want to receive accessibility and sustainability tips, or updates on what we’re up to, feel free to follow us on LinkedIn or join our newsletter subscribers.

If you want to know more about what we do, think you’d like to work with us, or have a suggestion for how we can have more positive impact, we’d love to hear from you.

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