The MRS Climate Pledge was launched in June 2023 and has four key commitments, including tracking and measuring carbon emissions and energy use; taking tangible actions to reduce emissions and energy use; transparency on progress; and collaboration across the sector to share best practice.

Signatories will need to complete an annual climate pledge tracker to provide evidence of progress for each of the four pillars relative to previous years.

Research for MRS’s climate pledge tracker had 78 companies take part and found that the average level of emissions was 2.54 tonnes of carbon dioxide per full-time equivalent worker. For comparison, a realistic ballpark for UK services firms are 0.5 to five tonnes.

Of the companies that took part in the research, 86% had improved waste management to increase recycling, 68% had encouraged a reduction in employee commuting, 62% had boosted energy efficiency in their buildings and 60% had seen a fall in business travel emissions per member of staff.

However, the research showed that 75% of respondents had not yet taken action to communicate the emissions from specific projects or research methodologies with clients, and 65% had not yet switched data storage to net zero data centres.

Other areas that still required work across the respondents included using a 100% renewable energy supplier ( 31% versus 43% who had not) and offering employee pensions that have funds with net zero targets ( 35% versus 49% that had not yet).

A small majority ( 53%) had not yet engaged with suppliers to understand their emissions and encouraged targets that aligned with the company, versus 43% that had taken this action.

The tracking for the MRS Climate Pledge includes carbon footprint disclosure, improvements in data and reduction actions, and organisations are advised to develop or align with a carbon reduction plan.

In practice, this will require signatories to measure their emissions and work to improve that measurement over time, with key hotspots for emissions identified and tangible steps taken to reduce their impact.

Reporting of progress should be both internal and external, with best practice shared to help others in the wider sector also improve performance on tackling climate change. 

Jane Frost, chief executive at MRS, said: “Change depends both on willingness to act and the evidence to determine our priorities.

“We now have a benchmark for our carbon emissions as a sector, which is an important first step in making change happen. All the participating agencies should be proud of being in the forefront of positive climate change.”