Who is it for and what are the benefits?

Count Your Carbon is the nation’s first free, full scope carbon emissions tool built for – and in collaboration with – nurseries, schools and colleges. It allows users to:

• Calculate the carbon footprint for your educational setting.
• Understand the areas of consumption with the greatest carbon burden.
• Opt for averages where you don’t have access to information.
• Generate a tailored report on how to reduce carbon emissions in your setting.
• Compare your carbon footprint over time.

Designed in response to the DfE’s Sustainability and Climate Change strategy, the tool is aimed at staff working in educational settings, with a goal to achieve reduce carbon emissions in educational settings by 50% by 2030. We hope the report and recommendations will allow settings to engage their students in the changes they pursue and this work will also support Green Flag applications with Eco-Schools.

Months of in-depth research with staff working in educational settings including teachers, head teachers, catering staff, bursars, and caretakers have informed the questions asked and the design of the tool.  Local authorities and multi-academy trusts (MATs) also provided extensive insights and baseline data to make the tool as smart and accurate as possible.

The benefits of using Count Your Carbon

Count your Carbon is designed to support educational settings on their sustainability journey, both individually, and as a tool to drive policy change.

With more and more settings using the platform, we hope that very quickly our data will show areas that need to be addressed at scale. We will use all our relationships and influence to bring about the biggest change possible, supporting the sector to maximise its carbon reduction potential.

Benefits to your setting

Count Your Carbon enables educational settings to identify a total carbon footprint and understand the areas of greatest burden, as well as receive clear recommendations for reductions.

This is an easy starting point for your sustainability journey and a springboard from which to engage the whole school community in your green agenda.

The results and recommendations reports will arm you with the knowledge to influence senior leaders, governors and the wider school culture.

Schools can use the data to develop their own funding bids, or to talk to local authorities about changes needed that are beyond the setting’s sphere of control.

Benefits for your local authority

Joining hundreds of other educational settings in using Count Your Carbon has wider benefits which can help influence change on a bigger scale.

The data you provide will not only help our calculator become more accurate over time, it will also illustrate to local authorities – many of whom have declared a climate emergency – the areas that can benefit from the biggest change.  This will inspire investment to drive changes that schools may struggle to afford or achieve individually, but become possible at scale.

Eco-Schools England is run by the nation’s favourite environmental charity, Keep Britain Tidy. Through Keep Britain Tidy’s extensive network of local authorities, we will use localised data to influence change.

Benefits for our nation

Large amounts of detailed carbon emissions data for settings across the country paint a powerful picture for policy makers and the Department for Education.

The Department for Education’s new strategy ‘Sustainability and climate change: a strategy for the education and children’s services systems’ seeks to engage educational settings in sustainability. We have the ability to advise the DfE on what proportion of settings have begun their carbon journey, and what actions they are taking.

Keep Britain Tidy staff are experts in engaging decision makers and will advocate for change on a national platform.