#225 Culligan International’s Carbon Verification Success – Tackling Scope 1 and 2 Emissions

The process of verifying your carbon emissions requires a lot of data gathering, number crunching and in some cases conversion if you’re international. It’s certainly no small task! However, it’s worth the effort. With it completed you will have a much better idea of your current impact and be able to make better informed decisions on how to reduce it. When starting out on your verification journey you’ll need to start with calculating your scope 1 & 2 emissions, these are the direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that your business is responsible for. That alone can be quite a mammoth task, especially if you have a lot of locations worldwide, such is the case as today’s guest: Culligan. In this episode, Mel is joined by Martin Murden, ESG Manager at Culligan International, to discuss why Culligan started their verification journey, the key insights uncovered, and the challenges involved with calculating emissions for a large international organisation. You’ll learn · Who is Martin Murden? · Who are Culligan International? · Why are Culligan seeking third-party verification for scope 1 & 2? · Key insights uncovered as a result of verification · What changes have they made to their data collection processes? · How did internal teams find the experience? · How have Culligan utilised verified data? · What is the biggest misconception about the verification process? Resources · Culligan International · Carbonology · Culligan 2024 ESG Report In this episode, we talk about: [02:05] Episode Summary – Mel Blackmore is joined by Martin Murden, ESG Manager at Culligan, to discuss their carbon verification journey and explore the challenges associated with calculating scope 1 & 2 emissions for a large international organisation. [03:25] Who is Martin Murden? Martin is an ESG Manager at Culligan, his role focuses more on the environmental aspect of ESG compliance. His main role involves looking after Culligan’s carbon emissions, carbon reduction plan, evaluating use of resources and exploring initiatives to reduce their current impact. One fun fact that not many people know about Martin, one of his ancestors was involved in the creation of Turkish delight! [06:25] Who are Culligan International? Culligan International are a global leader in water services. Their solutions provide cleaner, safer, better tasting water. While not a household name here in the UK, chances are if you’re refilling a bottle from a cooler, it’s likely derived from one of Culligan’s brands. They own over 100 businesses in over 40 countries, with more than 600 sites ranging from warehouses and offices to production and water bottling plants. They also manage 7000 vehicles which help with delivering, installing and maintaining their equipment. With over 15,000 people working at Culligan, it’s clear to say that it’s a large organisation with a lot of moving parts. They keep sustainability at the heart of their business, working to discourage the use of single use plastic, and looking at other ways to reduce their impact via their supply chain. [08:45] Why did Culligan seek third-party carbon verification? – There were a few reasons, including: - Regulatory requirements: Being a global business, there are a number of mandatory reporting requirements coming down the pipeline in certain countries they operate in, such as Australia and Mexico, Canada, California. Accuracy: Part of these requirements is assuring the transparency and accuracy of the data. Third-party assurance is essential to meet mandatory reporting requirements, in addition to being an added level of assurance for stakeholders. From an internal point of view, it also gives the ESG team more confidence in the gathered data, allowing them to form a more robust baseline for their decarbonisation strategy. [10:15] Culligan’s decarbonisation strategy – In 2024, Culligan published a number of commitments, one of those was to reduce its scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 40% by 2035. They built a decarbonisation plan based on information that they had available internally. This consisted of looking at vehicle fleet use and facilities use, how large they are and what kind of energy sources they use. They also spoke to individual business units to understand where it may be possible to switch to renewable energy sources, how initial energy use could be reduced and making use of lower carbon vehicles. They were confident in their ability to reduce their impact, but they needed that third-party assurance that their initial baseline was as accurate as possible. [11:35] Is this the first time Culligan has gone through a formal verification process? – While they have measured their carbon emissions since 2022, they have never formally gone through the full verification ...