Leap’s Sustainable Development Goals | Part 1

the seventeen colours of the united nations sustainable development goals

How We Chose Our Targets

The seventeen Sustainable Development Goals agreed by the United Nations in 2015 are a blueprint for achieving a better and more sustainable future for all, no matter the business sector or size.
Earlier this year the team here at Leap selected a number of goals to work towards as a business, and in this short series we’ll be sharing the process that we went through to choose our targets and why, highlight the work that we’re already doing, and outline our future plans to ensure that we reach our targets.

Leap’s SDGs Workshop

Each of the UN’s SDGs is a broad global goal, broken down into several sub-goals. Being global targets that need to be relevant and actionable in every one of the 193 signatory countries, the task of breaking down and selecting relevant and achievable goals for a business can be daunting, and potentially onerous. We called upon the expertise of our friend Fran van Dijk of fellow B Corp One Stone Advisors, to help us navigate the process.

Fran ran a workshop with our team in March when she was in Cornwall to deliver an SDGs workshop with Tevi here at the Old Bakery Studios. The process of selecting Leap’s goals was driven entirely by the team. Fran guided us through the different goals and helped us to compile a list of potential goals that everybody was able to challenge, until we settled upon a set that all were satisfied with.

How We Broke Down The SDGs

The biggest hurdle that we faced with selecting a set of goals was the struggle of understanding each of them and knowing what we can do as a business and individuals to meet them. Luckily, leading B Corp change agency Futerra have simplified the SDGs in their guide “The Good Life Goals for World-Changing Businesses”, making them easier to understand and more actionable. We used that guide to translate the SDG points and actions, helping the team to understand the link between the goals and our daily actions and decisions as a business and team, so that we could select a set of goals for the business.

Leap’s Sustainable Development Goals

Below are the goals that we selected as a team. We’ve used Futerra’s Good Life Goals definitions in each of the titles, but then listed the official UN SDG definitions. You’ll see why we looked for a way to break them down into easily actionable points! In the next article in this series we’ll show how we’ve turned them into real business actions so that all the team could understand the connections and contribute.

SDG 7 – Use Clean Energy

Ensure Access To Affordable, Reliable, Sustainable And Modern Energy For All


7.2 By 2030, increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.
7.3 By 2030, double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency.

SDG 8 – Do Good Work

Promote Inclusive And Sustainable Economic Growth, Employment And Decent Work For All


8.3 Promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium- sized enterprises, including through access to financial services.
8.5 By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value.

SDG 12 – Live Better

“Ensure Sustainable Consumption And Production Patterns


12.5 By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse.
12.6 Encourage companies, especially large and transnational companies, to adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle.
12.6 Encourage companies, especially large and transnational companies, to adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle.

SDG13 – Act On Climate

“Take Urgent Action To Combat Climate Change And Its Impacts


13.1 Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate related hazards and natural disasters in all countries.
13.3 Improve education, awareness raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning.

SDG 17 – Come Together

Revitalise The Global Partnership For Sustainable Development


17.16 Enhance the global partnership for sustainable development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilise and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals in all countries, in particular developing countries.
17.17 Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships.-

Setting Targets 

Having selected this set of SDGs to work towards, we then agreed upon specific actions that would allow us to meet each of the targets. We’ll share those actions and what we’ve already achieved, in the next article in this series.