Environmental Impact

It is of vital importance to us at the First Aid Training Co-operative that we minimise, wherever possible, our impact on the environment as we carry out first aid training and the running of our business. In 2026 we’ve started working with Carbon Collaborate, who have built us a bespoke carbon accounting tool which allows us to measure our environmental impact in a much more detailed way than previously, as we work towards net-zero. (Click their logo below if you’d like to know more, we can highly recommend their service.)

What is our Environmental Impact?

37.69 tCO₂e in 2025

As part of our work with Carbon Collaborate, we have recalculated our emissions that were previously calculated using spend data, to now give much more accurate results using activity based data, giving us a much more robust, accurate and reliable report. What this has shown is that our previous reports actually over-estimated our impact for the years 2023 and 2024.

Our total emissions for the year 2025 are 37.69 tons of CO₂e. This is an increase on our newly recalculated emissions for 2024. This reflects a collection of small increases that add up to an overall increase. For example we have employed a new office team member, so our home working emissions naturally increase. We also purchased some new equipment for our team which again has an impact.

As our business emissions are predominantly impacted by the amount of training we do (meaning that business growth equals an increase in emissions), our new Emissions Report includes a measure of Emissions Intensity. This divides category emissions value by the amount of training delivered to give us a more representative measurement.

You can download and read our full Environmental Impact reports for 2023, 2024, and 2025 here

Reducing Our Emissions

The best thing we can do as humans to avoid climate disaster is to reduce our overconsumption of raw materials, and reduce our emissions wherever possible. At the First Aid Training Co-operative we do this in a number of ways:

• We employ a local workforce wherever possible, to avoid excessive commuting. This includes our office team working remotely from home offices. In the delivery of first aid courses however, we need to travel to reach our client’s venues, and unfortunately our trainers need to have quite spacious vehicles in order to carry all the equipment they require.
• In order to reduce travel, we employ a large team of trainers with a good geographical spread across the country. Proximity to the client is a big part of our decision making process when assigning a trainer to a course. We also provide accommodation for our trainers when travelling more than 90 minutes to arrive at a course. This helps to reduce travel on multi-day courses, as well as ensuring that they are well rested and fresh for delivering your course.
• Our publicly available first aid courses are scheduled in centrally located venues, that are close to centres of population, meaning that participants can potentially use sustainable travel options to arrive at their course rather than travelling individually by car.
• Way back in 2016 we introduced our Digital First Aid Manuals. These massively reduced both our consumption of paper and printing ink, as well as transport associated with distribution of paper manuals.
• In 2023 we introduced our new trainer app, following significant investment into developing it with the help of SkillSeeder.com. This reduced our use of paper to virtually zero by allowing our training team to carry out all course administration and assessment digitally, using their own phone or tablet device.
• The trainer app also significantly improves the efficiency of our course processing process, which in turn reduces our energy consumption.
• In 2024 we invested in a research project with the University of Dundee, aiming ultimately to replace the individual lungs and face shields for our CPR manikins as these are some of last single use items that we use in our company that cannot be replaced with a more sustainable alternative. The initial research was a good starting point and gave us a better understanding of the challenges, but it’s clear that it is not an easy project to deliver as a small company. We will continue to investigate ways in which we can develop the idea following the findings of our research project.

Emission Reduction Projects for 2026

• We are working with our suppliers to ensure that our Environmental Impact Policies are aligned
• We are also working on ways that we can influence our clients to make more environmentally responsible choices in travelling to our public courses. This will first involve recording the ways in which our clients travel, and assigning an impact to that. In turn that will allow us to see the impact or otherwise of our initiatives. Whilst this sits outside of our Scope 3 footprint boundary, we acknowledge our responsibility in this source of emissions, which wouldn’t occur if our course wasn’t happening.
• A further initiative we are seeking to implement is a means for our clients to offset the environmental impact of their part in one of our courses by funding climate action, directly from our checkout or invoice.

Funding Climate Action

We must take positive steps to mitigate and adapt to the worst impacts of climate change. 

We fund projects through Ecologi that meet industry-leading standards under Gold Standard and Verified Carbon Standard projects that are proven (and externally audited) to have a positive impact on the environment. 

These projects cover a variety of schemes that include: community initiatives, renewables projects, sustainable transport improvements, and restoration of vital wetland habitats. All contribute to the accelerating action against climate change to protect and restore nature and transition to renewable technologies. Something that we are very proud to support!

Taking this a step further, we have started publishing the environmental cost of the training courses we deliver, expressed as kgCO₂e emitted per day of training. This allows our clients to understand the emissions created by their course:

Working Towards Net Zero

We all need to reduce our environmental impact as we work towards Net Zero by 2050. At First Aid Training Co-operative, we have no Scope 1 or Scope 2 emissions and therefore our reduction targets are all based on Scope 3 emissions. The newly updated (April 2026) Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) guidance requires a near-term minimum Scope 3 target of 33.3% reduction measured over a 10 year period from the baseline year of 2023. For us, this means achieving that reduction by 2033, and a long term Net Zero target by 2050.

A 33.3% reduction compared to our emissions from 2023 feels like a lot, particularly when we are already quite low impact as a business. However there is always more we can do and this gives us a tangible target to work towards year on year.

Working Together Co-operatively to Spread Good Practice

If you would like to discuss how your training business could reduce your emissions, or indeed have any further ideas for us on how we could reduce ours, we’d love to hear from you! Net Zero will only be achieved if we all do our part, and do our best to influence those around us to do the same!