Our Green Recovery Plan

Can COVID-19 give us an environmental boost?

Experts have highlighted tackling climate change as a key factor in helping the UK recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Committee on Climate Change argues that focusing on building climate resilience will help the UK create a stronger, cleaner and more resilient economy.

Reading the letter (available via https://www.theccc.org.uk) I started thinking about how my own company, Celtic Financial Planning Limited, should respond to the climate challenge.

We already have a strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) mandate, but can we leverage the current crisis to push ourselves harder and make a bigger difference to our environment?

I think we can – and here’s how our new ‘green’ recovery plan will help us do it …

  1. We will give a £100 voucher to all staff towards the cost of a new bicycle, to help promote personal mobility and fitness;
  2. We will actively encourage the use of electronic documents and electronic signatures (which many more providers are now accepting thanks to the current crisis) and thus reduce our dependence on physical postage;
  3. Wherever possible we will hold client meetings and reviews online, thereby helping cut the need to travel and also protecting the health and welfare of our clients and team;
  4. We will continue to lobby providers to send us documents via email rather than on paper, further reducing the use of paper and postage;
  5. During the crisis, the Celtic Financial team has worked very effectively from home and we will therefore be encouraging more home working, which will mean fewer car journeys;
  6. We are already passionate about Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investments and will be launching virtual workshops to help educate new and existing clients about them;
  7. Although we already prefer to work with providers and investment partners who have their own CSR policies, we will now be scrutinising companies who we feel have a negative impact on the environment;
  8. Where possible, we will support carbon efficient suppliers and also prioritise working with local businesses.

I hope these actions will help us find a silver lining to the current crisis and make Celtic Financial Planning a strong financial planning partner for the future.

We can all do business, but are we doing business in the right way?