RMP’s Sustainability Vision for 2025 - Part 1

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have been made increasingly aware of the growing footprint humans are having on the planet.

I’m sure you’re all aware of how increases in global temperature, rising sea levels and erratic weather patterns are all linked to carbon emissions. Protecting the future of our planet has never been as important as it is today.

Since the company was founded, our goal has always been to inspire young people to take the first steps in their career. To support the next generation.

The Climate Crisis is tethered to that goal. Their future careers depend on the future planet we create for them.

So what can we all do to make a genuine difference to this global problem?

What is RMP doing to champion sustainability?

In the office we use a green energy provider, have a cycle to work scheme and I was delighted to discover that we've run some fantastic campaigns over the past couple of years with sustainability at their very heart.

Unilever’s 'our planet, our future' campaign highlighted Unilever's plastic promise for 2025 and inspired students to create a sustainability project.

HSBC's 'grow your community' campaign incentivised and inspired sustainable business ideas, as did Linklater's 'pitch for change' campaign too.

We supported the creative, copy, imagery and execution of each of those campaigns which engaged with thousands of university students. We’re also partnering with PwC to promote their new scavenger hunt on campuses across the UK to win an electric car.

RMP Connect, our data capture and email communications platform was created to digitalise paper-based data capture at careers fairs and we’ve seen clients stop printing their brochures to email them digitally to students via Connect.

What are we doing that isn’t very sustainable?

Each year we create and print 80,000 publications showcasing the best employers across the UK within undergraduate and school & college recruitment. Printing that volume of publications uses a lot of paper and is far from sustainable.

That said, this year for both guides we've used carbon neutral paper for the first time and offset the footprint of the guides through a new tree buddying scheme facilitated through our FSC approved supplier which ensures all inks used are vegetable-based.

Our Brand Ambassador offering involves all students receiving a branded hoodie to wear on campus. The Sustainable Recruitment Alliance’s recent Impact Report highlights textiles as generating 64% of all merchandise carbon emissions.

Over 250 Brand Ambassadors each year each receive a hoodie, this impacts our carbon footprint - should we find more sustainable suppliers or remove this altogether?

Our plan for 2025

The first step is to understand how sustainable we are.What do we need to measure? What data do we need to find out?

• We recently partnered with Henley Business School and supported international masters student Shuhao Lin with a research project. His research helped highlight key areas we need to learn more about such as our energy and water consumption and helped benchmark this.

• National Undergraduate Employability Awards 2022 - Rewarding and celebrating excellence across all stakeholders in undergraduate work experience, we’ll bring 500 early careers professionals together all in one room. Sustainability will be at the very heart of the event with no brochures or handouts and inspiring speakers sharing their stories.

• Partnering with the Sustainable Recruitment Alliance - Earlier this year, I interviewed Laura Yeates from Clifford Chance on The Jack & Ollie Show | The Early Careers Podcast. She was creating a Sustainable Recruitment Alliance (SRA) to reduce the carbon footprint of early careers professionals. Having seen how much wastage there is in recruitment and how many brochures or freebies are thrown away at law fairs, Laura wanted to make a difference.

We’re proud to be one of the founding partners, which will help support the SRA’s growth and ensuring sustainable recruitment processes are high on the agenda of all early careers professionals. 

This is very much a journey and one we’re at the very start of. We certainly don’t have all the answers for 2025 just yet, but we’ve plenty of passion and enthusiasm.

Step 1 is to fully review our impact and Step 2 is to then map out initiatives for reducing and offsetting our carbon footprint. We’ll then be able to challenge ourselves to an ambitious date for carbon neutrality and carbon negativity - two key areas we’ll share in part 2 in Spring!

We welcome all feedback, ideas and suggestions and invite you to join us on this journey to saving the planet.

Ollie, co-founder of RMP Enterprise