How smaller businesses can become net-zero influencers and enablers

Richard K. Blundel

What if all of the UK’s 48,000 hairdressing salons and barbershops started sharing water and energy-saving advice with their clients, alongside a clipper cut or a wash and blow dry? Previous studies have demonstrated that hairdressers can shape customers’ environmental behaviour with guidance they can trust and that relates to their everyday lives.

And it’s not just hairdressers. Cafes and restaurants are also addressing food-related emissions with carbon labelling schemes and more sustainable menu choices.

Recruiting smaller businesses to support the drive for net zero makes a lot of sense. More than half of the UK’s business emissions are estimated to come from its 6 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs – companies with less than 250 employees). As the authors of a recent OECD report argue, there’s “no net zero without SMEs”.

But the decarbonisation of smaller firms has only recently attracted serious attention from policymakers,