Creating Ledgy's climate action principles

Ledgy was built to help entrepreneurs drive positive change. We believe that a company’s growth shouldn’t come at the expense of the planet – but it can be difficult to make space in our day-to-day to prioritise what we know to be important. We want to make our actions more systematic and transparent, so as Ledgy and our customers grow, the planet can thrive too. To mark this week’s Time for Climate Action campaign, we’ve laid out our journey towards creating Ledgy’s Climate Action Principles here.

How it all started

"Growing Ledgy’s team happened steadily, then suddenly. In the four years from Ledgy’s founding in 2017 to July 2021, we grew from three co-founders up to 17 people. Then, since last summer, we trebled the size of the team."

Since our earliest days, Ledgy has been committed to supporting companies working to fight climate change. That’s why one of our first discount offers – still running today – was a special price for Ledgy customers who tackle the climate crisis with their business models.

We decided to focus more deliberately on climate action after our first offsite with a 12-person team. It dawned on us that even early-stage companies like us have to think carefully about their emissions. This is when we decided to join Leaders for Climate Action, Europe’s largest climate action community centered around leadership and collaboration. Joining this community meant more resources and networks to tap into what we care about, and more accountability as we continue to grow.

In Ledgy’s first year as LFCA members, we appointed a Climate Officer, measured and offset our scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, and actively participated in the 2021 Time for Climate Action Campaign.

In addition, we created the first iteration of our Impact Committee, where Ledgistas passionate about the planet and people get together every month and work on how we can better practice climate action and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). In these meetings, we often discussed and iterated on drafts of principles to underpin our work on climate.

Tracking emissions as you grow

Growing Ledgy’s team happened steadily, then suddenly. In the four years from Ledgy’s founding in 2017 to July 2021, we grew from three co-founders up to 17 people. Then, since last summer, we trebled the size of the team.

We are proud to have welcomed so many new customers on board, raised funding from incredible investors and hired amazing people. But this has had a consequence for our own footprint as a company. Ledgy’s climate actions and emissions were much easier to track and prioritize when we were a smaller team, but growing headcount means much more activity, which has consequences for emissions.

With this added complexity, we decided to make our approach to climate action more structured. We sought out advice from peers, asked our leadership team for feedback, and then launched the first definitive iteration of our climate action principles at our recent 55-person offsite. We then held a workshop to gather feedback and think about additional next steps.

Now, we’re launching our Climate Action Principles publicly, which consist of Core Principles and Operating Principles. The Core Principles are our high-level commitments as a company to measure, assess, reduce and compensate our emissions on an ongoing basis. These include setting a carbon emissions budget and internal carbon price, as well as measuring and compensating our emissions while evaluating reduction possibilities.

As a software company, Ledgy’s emissions are comparably low to other industries, however, they are not at zero. The main sources of our direct emissions are our materials and resources, our mobility, and food and drink when we get together. We also have a large responsibility when it comes to our communications. The Operating Principles, therefore, seek to take the climate into account at each of these levels.

Click here to read our Climate Action Principles in detail.

Tips to start taking climate action

As we continue our efforts to make a positive impact on the climate, we think we can share our journey so far and in doing so, help others in their efforts as well. Here are our five top tips to start taking action as a growing startup:

1. Join a community with climate action at its core;
2. Appoint a climate officer to create accountability for climate-related outcomes;
3. Establish a recurring meeting to discuss progress and keep initiatives moving;
4. Engage the entire company in climate action by hosting workshops and brainstorming sessions;
5. And lastly, prioritise action over perfection! A long journey begins with a single step, and getting started now is far better than waiting for the perfect time.

Where next?

Action doesn’t end here!

As Ledgy continues to grow, we will revisit our Climate Action Principles, improve upon them, and hopefully gain more resources to help us increase our impact as a whole – and we hope you can too. Climate is something Ledgy’s founders have always taken seriously, and it continues to motivate climate-conscious Ledgistas to join our growing team. Find out more about what Ledgy does for the planet here.