Step 5: Ratchet, review and recommend to others

In this blog series, with the help of the Green Games Guide - the UK's first resource for tips on how to reduce your carbon footprint - I’ll be answering the all-important question: what can your game business do to tackle climate change?

So far, we’ve addressed:

• How to set your scope and timeline
• How to calculate your carbon footprint
• How to reduce your carbon footprint
• How to offset your carbon footprint

Now it's time to look at Step 5 from Playing for the Planet's Five Step Process: ratchet, review and recommend to others.

You’ve now worked your way through four very important steps which should have successfully steered you and your business on the right course to taking positive action against climate change. Now there’s only one step left but this one isn’t exhaustive. There’s always more that you can do.

Read the Green Games Guide.

🍃 Ratchet and review each year

The Measure, Reduce, Offset, process is a continuous improvement cycle. Each year you should evaluate and improve your data, revisit your progress against your goals.

🍃 Engage with staff

Staff engagement can not only reduce costs of action, but also increases staff retention among the growing workforce who seek companies with purpose. Achieving ambitious goals together can build skills that will propel your teams in other areas as well.

• Have a dedicated session with staff to share ideas, listen to others and shape commitments with an action plan to fulfil them

• Let staff volunteer for charitable, eco-friendly projects in their communities

• Help your teams understand and offset their own carbon footprints (or offset it for them!) by looking at incentives to help or support home workers to switch energy supplier or help them to offset their summer holidays flights
  

🍃 Get your games community on board

Explore how your audience can support and engage with your work. Consider how you can integrate environmental aspects into your games and join a green game jam and riff on ideas for how to incorporate green themes and ideas into your games.

🍃 Make best practice everyone’s business

Share your learning with others: Once you have taken the step to become carbon neutral, use your voice and influence others in the industry to consider the same by supporting them on this journey.

🍃 Join the collective adventure

Join the collective adventure to learn from others and join the collective efforts to adapt our industry to environmental challenges. You can sign up to Playing For The Planet and join Ukie’s Sustainability Working Group to share thoughts and best practices with other games industry people.

🍃 Share your voice

Post and share your sustainability journey milestones. And follow 5 green heroes on Twitter (or your corporate twitter account) to amplify voices in this space.

🍃 Legacy Emissions

Run a calculation of what it would take to achieve net zero since your company’s inception (Microsoft is offsetting all emissions since 1975) and evaluate whether you can meet (or beat!) this ambition!

Upcoming events

Green Games Summit - 20-21 October

Sign up to the Green Games Summit

The Green Games Summit will for the first time bring the international games sector together to share knowledge and discuss and shape the industry’s response to the climate challenge and sustainability. It is being delivered by Ukie, in collaboration with ISFE and UN Environment Programme’s Playing for the Planet Alliance. The event is sponsored by Sony Interactive Entertainment.

The event will be held (remotely in Hopin) over the afternoons (UK time) of 20th and 21st October 2021, ahead of COP26. Each day will contain 3.5 hours of speakers, showcases, panels, debates and networking.

Ukie are inviting people from games businesses from around the world to attend the event so that they can:

• Hear the latest thinking and join the debate on the role the wider games sector can play in tackling the climate crisis

• Find out how you and the games business you work for can become more environmentally sustainable

• Learn from other games businesses about the latest innovative activities, activations and initiatives that are inspiring change around the world.

🌍 About the Green Games Guide

The partnership between Ukie, Games London and the Playing for the Planet Alliance will also encourage the sector to think about how it can use its huge reach - the games industry has the potential to reach 1 in 3 people on the planet - to inspire players to change how they think about the environment and to start conversations about the wider collective efforts the sector can make.

Read the guide for tips on how to reduce your carbon footprint now.