Merton Council has been accredited as a Bronze Level Carbon Literate Organisation, highlighting our dedication towards tackling climate change, reducing our organisational carbon emissions, and continuing our commitment to work towards a lower-carbon future. 

Carbon Literacy is defined as, “An awareness of the carbon dioxide costs and impacts of everyday activities, and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions, on an individual, community and organisational basis,” and revolves around a day’s worth of learning and action on climate change. 

Numerous staff have completed carbon literacy training over the last year, to broaden their understanding of the costs, causes and impacts of climate change, and how climate actions can be applied to their work.

A Carbon Literate Organisation is an organisation that has been accredited by The Carbon Literacy Project as being “culturally Carbon Literate”; maintaining a proportion of its workforce as Carbon Literate and demonstrating its Carbon Literacy through its organisational behaviour.

CLO accreditation is a tiered system with Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum levels, requiring increasing levels of commitment to action on climate change and creating a low-carbon culture. 

To become accredited as a Bronze Level Carbon Literate Organisation, we worked with the Association for Public Service Excellence using The Local Authorities Toolkit to train our elected members, senior officers (including the Chief Executive) and a pilot group of officers, before offering the training to all staff.