A week in the life of… an environmental sustainability manager

Tuesday

I’m really looking forward to a workshop day with colleagues and our retrofit contractor, where we’re discussing our rolling whole-home retrofit programme, which has delivered energy performance improvements to more than 1,000 homes in the past 18 months.

We talk about progress, challenges and new ideas, as well as have some great conversations about how we’re engaging and communicating with our residents, which is crucial to achieving our target of improving all our homes up to Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Band C by 2030.

Honest conversations are critical to ensuring that we prevent problems arising – and tackling them quickly when they do. The more confidence we have in the success of our retrofit programme, the more confidence we can give to our customers in their homes.

After the workshop, I jump on a call about providing energy-saving advice to customers. Against rising inflation and soaring energy costs, it’s critical that we signpost, advise and inform as much as we can. Sanctuary has a strong record on supporting residents living in fuel poverty, but now more people than ever are at risk.

We talk about involving our Environmental Community of Interest (a resident engagement group for our customers to help shape our transition to net zero) to help us gather residents’ own suggestions on how they save energy, so we can share that best practice more widely.

Wednesday

I’m back in the office today.

I start the morning with a Greener Futures Partnership meeting. The partnership is a unique collaboration of not-for-profit social housing providers that sees us working with Abri, Anchor, Home Group and Hyde to jointly progress our shared sustainability goals.

I catch up with a colleague at lunch, before heading out for some fresh air and a brisk walk.

In the afternoon, I refine analysis on how our 73,000 social housing properties can reach net zero. We’ve used modelling software to plan for hitting various targets, including reaching EPC Band C in England by 2030 and EPC Band B in Scotland by 2032 – aligned with respective government targets – as well as net zero across all our social housing by 2050.

Of course, there are a range of ways that we can achieve these targets, with varying levels of capital investment and retrofits required. It’s vital we have plans in place, but they must be flexible and accommodate market or regulatory changes.

Thursday

I work from home today.

I have a busy morning of meetings, but find time to post on our internal ‘sustainability community’. This is a 250-strong channel where colleagues can share all things relating to sustainability.

At lunch, I meet some colleagues from across the sector in my hometown, Cheltenham. I dodge the rain and we discuss new research and potential opportunities for collaboration.

We offer a wide range of different housing and accommodation at Sanctuary, and part of my role is keeping in touch with all the different areas of our organisation to discuss projects and progress towards decarbonisation.

This afternoon I meet with our student accommodation team, and I’m excited by their commitment to improving the sustainability of both customer behaviour and buildings.

Friday

I start the day with a quick catch-up with my team.

Afterwards I complete our monthly carbon reports. These are crucial to monitoring progress towards decarbonisation, so we know exactly how we’re performing. I love this part of my job, as I can see how all our projects and initiatives are impacting our energy consumption.

Equally, reporting on environmental performance motivates us to work harder to reduce emissions if we aren’t performing against benchmarked data.

At the end of the day, it’s time for Friday night gym. There’s nothing like sweating out the week!