Carbon Footprints & Reduction Plans for SMEs
Keep Your Customers Happy. Win New Ones.
If a customer, tender or procurement team has asked you for a company carbon footprint, a carbon accountancy report or an emissions reduction plan, especially if you’re not sure where to start, you’re in the right place.
Haynard helps manufacturing and service SMEs create a clear, credible footprint and reduction plan that meet customer and stakeholder demands, secure existing contracts, and open doors to new business.
Protect customer trust, strengthen your supplier credibility and prepare your business for future carbon reporting requests — affordably and without overwhelming your team.
Client results in their own words
Support for a Transport Operations company
“Provided invaluable support to us as part of our Carbon footprint reporting and Energy management work, and was able to quickly interpret, manipulate and analyse complex data to drive and inform developments and improvements.”
Matthew Wakefield
Safety, Security & Sustainability Director at Greater Anglia
Creating a PPN006 Carbon Reduction Plan for construction tenders
“Helped us create our first ever Carbon Reduction Plan. She made the whole process straightforward and easy to understand, and her support has already made a positive difference to our business.”
Sam Hunkin
Founding Director,
Best Environmental Solutions Ltd
Carbon Footprinting and Reduction Plan for a remote-working team
“Fantastic at working with us to develop our Carbon Reduction Plan. Her advice has fully demonstrated her mastery of the topic. She has also completely understood our objective of having a fully implementable plan that supports our business and helps the planet!”
Anne-Marie Southall
Change Strategy Development and Implementation Service Lead,
Concerto Partners
When customers ask for carbon evidence, the pressure builds quickly
Customer Pressure
A customer, tender or procurement team has asked for carbon evidence — but the request may be vague, urgent and unclear.
Operational Pressure
You need to identify existing data, fill any gaps and report correctly without pulling your team away from day-to-day work.
Reputation Pressure
You want to look credible, prepared and professional when customers ask what your business is doing about carbon.
“Most SMEs I work want to respond but are stretched thin, often without in-house sustainability expertise. And when customer trust, contracts or future opportunities may depend on the response, there’s no room for guesswork.”
From customer request to credible carbon response
Haynard helps you cut through the noise, understand what your customer or tender process is really asking for, and create a practical carbon footprint and reduction plan your business can actually use.
The aim is not to produce a report that sits in a folder. It is to give you the evidence, actions and confidence to respond professionally now — and handle future carbon requests more easily.
How it works and what you get:
1. Clear Carbon Footprint Report
Understand your current emissions and where they come from, so you have a credible baseline for customer reporting and future reduction planning.
2. Practical Emissions Reduction Action Plan
Receive a clear, meaningful plan that gives customers the evidence they need and targets that are realistic for your business.
3. Data-Driven Insights to Cut Carbon & Costs
Identify where your emissions are coming from and which practical changes could reduce both carbon impact and operational costs and risks, or open up opportunities.
4. In-House Sustainability Skills
Build your team’s confidence so they understand how to collect and analyse the data, implement the plan and how to respond to future carbon reporting requests more easily.
5. Hands-On Sustainability Support
Get practical guidance from an experienced carbon specialist who can help you move from uncertainty to keeping ahead of the new normal.
From pressure to clear action
Go From
- Unsure what your customer is really asking for
- Worried about losing trust, contracts or credibility
- Scrambling to respond to vague or urgent requests
- Unsure what data matters or even what you already have
To
- Clear on what your carbon reporting or reduction plan should include
- Confident sharing the right information with customers
- Equipped with a structured, credible plan
- Better prepared for future carbon reporting requests
You will know what to say, what to do next, and how to handle future carbon reduction plan requests.
Meet Dr Julie Winnard
Dr Julie Winnard combines 15+ years of sustainability experience with a previous 20 year background in engineering, R&D and project management.
Since founding Haynard Ltd in 2009, she has helped organisations understand, reduce and communicate their carbon impact in ways that are practical, credible and commercially useful.
Her doctorate in Sustainability for Engineering and Energy Systems gives her work a strong technical foundation, while her industrial and consultancy experience keeps the process grounded in real business needs.
Frequently Asked Carbon Questions
What’s the difference between a carbon footprint and carbon accounting?
A carbon footprint is a way to measure the impact of your company in a standard way.
Carbon accounting is a more recent term for the process, usually if you are using your book-keeping data to help work out the impact of goods and services you buy, but it can refer to the same thing as “creating a company carbon footprint”.
Are all carbon footprints the same?
Most carbon footprints are now be done to meet the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Different reporting systems may ask for a footprint to cover different subsets of what your business does. Some items are always included- like your operational emissions from fuels and gases (Scope 1) and your use of power (Scope 2).
Increasingly often you also need to include some or all of your supply chain emissions (Scope 3) too- this can cover everything from commuting, homeworking and Business Travel to logistics or any purchases or investments.
So an important part of any footprint is to do it to meet a particular standard, and a clear explanation of that plus what is included or not.
How are carbon footprints and carbon/emissions reductions plans related?
Reduction plans require you to set a target, usually in line with the latest climate science, and show your progress against it. So you need to measure your footprint to find your starting point, and to repeat the measurement regularly to show how things are going – typically at the end of each trading year.
Some reduction plans require more detail about your future reduction actions than others!
What is a PPN006 Carbon Reduction Plan (CRP) and can you create one?
PPN006 is Public Procurement Notice 006 which applies to UK public sector contracts over a certain size. It asks for a carbon reduction plan which contains specific data, metrics and a science based commitment. It is a prerequisite to even enter those bids even if you are a minor consortium member and has to be published before you bid.
Yes we can create them with you and specialise in this for SMEs- please ask for an example.
Are PPN006 plans different from other reduction plans and how long do they take?
They are usually quite similar to other reduction plans, they just happen to be in a specific format and need certain data; so you might need just one. Often other customers are more flexible so you can reuse your PPN006 CRP with lots of other customers and queries!
A footprint and plan typically takes 2-4 months for an SME (normally both the SME and we are working on it part time), so don’t leave it to the last minute for that important new customer bid!
If you need it faster please get in touch as something might be possible- it will depend on your level of organisation around your data as well as our resource availabiity.
Not sure what your customer is asking for?
Let’s talk it through.
In a short consultation, we’ll clarify what kind of carbon evidence you may need, what stage your business is at and what the next practical step should be.
You do not need to have everything ready before getting in touch. The first step is simply to understand what is being asked of you and what a credible response could look like.