Sumo Group plc (LON:SUMO), the award-winning provider of creative and development services to the video games and entertainment industries, has announced its intention to become carbon net zero across all its studios by 2025, as part of its ongoing commitment towards sustainable and environmentally friendly business practices.
As a significant first step, the Company has purchased carbon offsets equivalent to the approximate total emissions of all its UK businesses for 2020.
Sumo Group will be working in partnership with Ark2030 (ark2030.org) to support major eco-restoration projects around the world, to help offset the Company’s environmental impact. The first project to be supported by the Group is a programme to restore British Peatlands, focusing on an area of nearly 7,000 square kilometres of peatland soils in Northern England. Peatlands are the UK’s equivalent of rainforests, storing vast quantities of carbon. It is estimated that damage to the Northern Peatlands releases millions of tonnes of carbon annually. As well as their importance in carbon storage, healthy peatlands slow the flow of water from hills, reducing the risk of flooding, and support a wide range of wildlife.
Steven Webb, General Counsel at Sumo Group, said: “Sumo Group is committed to progressing its ESG strategy significantly and this commitment to net zero marks a major step in the environmental element of our work.
We understand the importance of environmental sustainability to all of our stakeholders and want to take a bold step that will make a visible and meaningful difference. In addition to taking actions to reduce our emissions, we will continue to work with Ark2030 to identify other projects for support in the regions where we have studios.”
Stephen Fern of Ark2030 added: “Ark2030 supports projects around the world that have large-scale impact on ecosystem regeneration and carbon-footprint reduction. The global nature of the programmes undertaken by Ark2030 will allow Sumo Group’s individual studios around the world to get involved in activities local to where they live or where their studio is based.”
Sumo Group has already set a number of environmental targets, including switching all energy contracts it controls to renewables, publishing its first Streamlined Energy and Carbon Report, and assessing the ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Standard for suitability in managing the Group’s environmental impacts. In addition, the Company has recently launched a scheme to make ultra-low emission vehicles more easily available to all its people in the UK.
