From good intentions to concrete action - getting started on sustainability

On the mornings of 15-17 March 2022, Blackbird hosted its first public Impact Summit focused on climate and sustainability.

The Summit brought together 20 speakers for 8 sessions to explore how startups and scale ups can help to tackle the big challenges posed by environmental change. Climate advocates, sustainability experts, founders, operators and investors discussed not only the need for action, but what role businesses can play and how to navigate the trade-offs, challenges and unknowns.

For the 700 people who signed up, we aimed for the sessions to be inspiring and informative. (If you missed a session, fear not, the recordings are below!)

But climate mitigation needs more than our Zoom attention.  It requires practical action.

That's why we asked our speakers and collaborators to nominate the most valuable tools, resources, events and actions you can take now to put that intention into action. Here they are:

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Actions you can take right now

Register for a follow up session

• Sign up to a follow up sustainability planning session with Abbie from Rewild  
• Pitch us your startup!

Measure your footprint

• Find out more about measuring your carbon emissions with Pathzero
• Speak to the NZ experts about measuring your carbon footprint, Toitū
• Or if you want to DIY your emissions calcs, these are some helpful resources from the NZ Government.  Or tools you can play with, including for product emissions and operational emissions

Get your startup off the ground

• Sign up to the Startmate Climate Fellowship
• Explore or join the list of Aussie climate startups hosted by Climate Salad or sign up to one of their upcoming events
• If you’re in NZ/Aotearoa, and have a startup idea, you might want to sign up to the CreativeHQ Climate Response Accelerator

Give, commit and advocate

• Find out more about how you can directly fund climate action through Groundswell or jump straight to giving
• Join the Leaders for Climate Action, a rapidly growing community of tech leaders and companies who are accelerating urgent climate action, or if you want to find our more, contact their Australian chapter lead, Shantanu
• Sign up to the 1% for the Planet

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Practical tools you can use to help you implement

• Download Rewild x Blackbird’s v1 template for building your first sustainability plan (above)
• Sign up to a free online course ‘Sustainability Fundamentals’ run by Ulleo
• Check out the Sustainability Playbook for Start-ups., which covers context, challenges and opportunities with applying sustainability to a start-up, put together by Akzente, Tech Founders, and Unternehmertum Venture Capital Partners
• If you are unsure where to begin with establishing focus areas and targets, the UN SDG Action Manager and B Lab’s B Impact Assessment are great measurement tools to use to identify existing strengths and any gaps or opportunity areas for improvement (across both environmental, social and governance-related issues)
• Explore some tools and materials for small businesses put together by Xero
• Get ideas from the behavioural scientists at the Behavioural Insights Team on things you can do to promote climate action:

1. If you’re a content creator or broadcaster
2. If you’re an institutional investor or particularly interested in pensions / superannuation
3. If you want to understand your own emissions profile and the simple steps you can take to reduce your impact

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Example sustainability and climate plans

For inspiration, some examples of other businesses doing interesting work in this area, check out:

• Shopify’s environmental commitments, Sustainability Fund and 2020 Sustainability Report
• WeTransfer’s Responsible Business Report
• Spotify’s Sustainability, Equity and Impact Report 2020
• Allbird’s approach to sustainability and 2020 Sustainability Report
• Veja’s Project Veja
• Outland Denim’s 2020 Sustainability Report

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Stuff to read / watch / listen to

Podcasts

• My Climate Journey by Jason Jacobs
• Outrage + Optimism by Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson
• Energy Insiders by Giles Parkinson and David Leitch
• ‍The Energy Gang by Stephen Lacey

Books / newsletters

• Climate Tech VC newsletter by Sophie Purdom 
• Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire by Rebecca Henderson
• True Tracks by Terri Janke
• Call of the Reed Warbler by Charles Massy
• Move: How Mass Migration Will Reshape the World - and What It Means for You by Parag Khanna
• Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe
• AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by Kai-Fu Lee, Chen Qiufan

Shows

• Breaking Boundaries: The Science of our Planet
• War on Waste
• Fight for Planet A
• Kiss the Ground

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Find out more about impact at Blackbird

• Find out more about our portfolio companies
• Read more about how we think about impact at Blackbird (and grab a copy of our policy)
• Read about our first Impact Summit focused on diversity, equity and inclusion

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Catch up on a session from the Summit

Miss a session from the summit, or want to watch back? We've got you covered.

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DAY 1

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DAY 2

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DAY 3

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Short videos from some of Australia-Aotearoa/New Zealand's exciting startups and businesses

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SunDrive

Groundswell

Young Henrys

CarbonChain

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Think we've missed something that would be valuable to startups?

Let us know!

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