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Schools climate action guide and template

Establishing your school’s carbon baseline

A useful first step is knowing what currently happens at your school. This means knowing your school’s carbon emissions. It also means knowing how sustainably it operates at the moment. Understanding this context is important to make meaningful changes through your climate action plan.

You can start by collecting baseline data. This should include:

  • how much energy your school buildings use
  • your waste generation
  • water usage
  • how transport is used to get to and from the school

This baseline data can be used to calculate how much carbon is being emitted by the school and where you can reduce it.

This will show you the emissions which your daily activities and business operations create. From this, your school can gain a clearer understanding of its impact on the planet.

In the climate action plan template (docx, 2.2mb), you can find example actions to establish your school’s baseline. You can also find information on how to carry out those actions.