Eden Country Care was the first participant to apply for See Through Carbon carbon reporting ecosystem Pilot. In this guest article, its director reports to colleagues on her experience with STC’s carbon reporting & advice.

Heather Tarney is Director of Eden Country Care (ECC). ECC is a family-owned provider of home care. It serves elderly and vulnerable people in 7 rural locations in Cumbria, UK.

Heather wrote the following article for a home care industry publication. She shares with professional colleagues her experience as a first participant in See Through Carbon’s pilot.

See Through Carbon (STC) is the carbon reporting arm of the See Through Network. Like See Through News, STC’s Goal is ‘Speeding Up Carbon Drawdown by Helping the Inactive Become Active’.

STC provides accurate, free, open and transparent carbon footprint calculation for all businesses. It also offers basic emissions reduction advice for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

STC’s carbon reporting ecosystem is designed to resolve the sector’s ‘SME Paradox’: 

• big businesses need accurate emissions data from their supply chain to comply with new regulations
• most SMEs in their supply chains have no carbon reporting obligation

This is changing. Carbon reporting is now extending more broadly. SMEs too face carbon reporting requirements, and must demonstrate emission reduction.

The British government has mandated carbon reporting for public bodies, big businesses and energy-intensive sectors. Now, it’s extending this to SMEs receiving state funding.

• Like all UK health-related businesses, ECC receives a significant amount of state funding.
• Like all health-sector SMEs, ECC must now submit a compliant Carbon Reduction Plan (CRP) to continue receiving government money .
• Like all SMEs, paying commercial services to meet these new rules is a considerable burden. ECC lacks the skillset, budget, or capacity to calculate compliant carbon reporting data on their own.

Heather manages an SME with 5 branches and 100 employees, in a highly-regulated, competitive industry. These are her thoughts on Eden Country’s Care’s experience as an early STC adopter.

(Details on ECC’s carbon footprint, how STC calculated it, and its emissions-reducing advice for compliance with new carbon reporting regulations here).

Is Your Green Strategy Ready for CQC Scrutiny?

by Heather Tarney, Director, Eden Country Care.

As CQC [the Care Quality Commission, the UK’s health and social care regulator] brings sustainability into focus, one provider’s experience shows how early action can deliver both compliance and business benefits.

By Heather Tarney, Director of Eden Country Care

When we set out to improve our social media presence at Eden Country Care, a rural home care provider based in Cumbria, we had no idea that journey would lead us to help shape the UK’s first free, transparent carbon footprinting tool for the home care sector.

But that’s exactly what happened, thanks to a chance conversation with a local marketing expert who also volunteers with the environmental initiative See Through Network.

Today, we’re proud to be the first home care business in the UK to take part in the See Through Carbon pilot, a project helping small organisations like ours to accurately measure and reduce our carbon footprints, completely free of charge.

Why carbon reporting matters in social care

Environmental sustainability is fast becoming a priority in social care. CQC’s “Well-Led” assessments now include sustainability; commissioners increasingly want to know how providers are reducing emissions; and frameworks like the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive are already setting the direction of travel, even for smaller providers like us.

But for many care businesses, measuring carbon emissions feels out of reach. Most of the tools available are expensive, complicated, or designed for office-based businesses, not for home care services with mobile teams covering rural areas.

Why a free, open system matters

See Through Carbon (STC) is part of the not-for-profit See Through Together, which was created to help more people take real, achievable steps to reduce emissions, not through finger pointing but through practical, evidence-based support.

What makes STC different is that they believe carbon reporting should be a public service, not a profit-making industry. Many commercial tools are costly, opaque, and often based on estimates rather than real data. Their business models often depend on selling carbon offset schemes rather than supporting meaningful change.

In contrast, STC is free to use, run by volunteers, and based on open, peer-reviewed science. That independence makes the data trustworthy and useful.

“You can’t fix what you can’t see, and you can’t manage what you can’t measure,” says STC Chair Robert Stern.
“For effective action, you need to trust the numbers. That’s why free and open carbon reporting is so important.”

What we learned at Eden Country Care

We were one of the first businesses to take part in See Through Carbon’s pilot, providing real-world data to help refine the reporting dashboard for the health sector.

The process was surprisingly simple. We submitted just a few key pieces of data, including:

• Our electricity usage
  
• The supplies we purchase
  
• And, most importantly for a rural home care provider like us: how far our care staff travel each day
  

The entire process took a few hours (we have around 100 employees and five offices) and involved filling in an Excel spreadsheet, but STC is improving its data collection all the time, including developing Large Language Model-augmented interfaces for small businesses unfamiliar or unconfident with Excel.

The See Through Carbon team analysed this data and produced a full carbon footprint report, which combines a written summary with a clear dashboard (they’re now developing an interface that will make the database fully accessible and interactive). 

Here’s what our prototype dashboard looks like:  

The dashboard makes it easy to see where emissions come from, breaking everything down into internationally recognised carbon reporting categories:

• Scope 1: Direct emissions from our own operations (e.g. office lighting, heating, company-owned vehicles etc)
  
• Scope 2: Indirect emissions from purchased electricity
  
• Scope 3: Everything else, the indirect emissions that wouldn’t exist if our business didn’t exist (supply chain, staff travel using their own cars, etc.)
  

The results didn’t come as a surprise, but seeing them presented so clearly was incredibly helpful. Over 93% of our total carbon footprint came from staff mileage. Like many rural care providers, our biggest environmental impact comes from the daily miles our care staff drive to reach clients in scattered communities.

Although we already knew that mileage was a major factor, having a trusted, transparent breakdown finally gave us a solid starting point for real action.

“It wasn’t about finding a shock,” my co-director Dan Tarney said.
“It was about getting clarity. Once you see it all laid out, it becomes possible to do something.”

From data to action

With this new level of visibility, we worked with See Through Carbon’s volunteer consultants to identify practical, achievable steps to reduce emissions. These included:

• Reducing unnecessary mileage through smarter scheduling
  
• Exploring the potential for electric vehicles
  
• Improving energy efficiency in the office
  
• Moving more processes paperless
  

Each action came with an estimated carbon impact, allowing us to prioritise quick wins, track our progress, and demonstrate meaningful improvements.

“Once you’ve measured your footprint, you can focus on the easiest wins. You can track progress. And most importantly, you can show others what you’re doing.”

You can read the full case study here:
Business Emissions Reporting Breakthrough – What Eden Country Care learned

A model that works for the sector

See Through Carbon is still a pilot, but it’s growing. More organisations are signing up, and the whole process, which took us about six hours, continues to improve. It’s particularly well-suited to care providers like us because it reflects how care is actually delivered: mobile, personal, and often rural. There’s no subscription, no software to buy, and no pressure to offset. Just clear data, useful tools, and free support from a team who genuinely want to help. 

Beyond reducing emissions, having accurate carbon data helps us better understand our travel patterns, identify operational efficiencies, and demonstrate accountability to regulators, commissioners, and families. And as more providers take part, this data could help make the case for wider support, whether that’s investment in electric vehicle infrastructure for care staff, more flexible green travel funding, or realistic policies that reflect how home care operates in practice.

Want to take part?

If you’re a home care provider and want to measure your carbon footprint in a way that’s honest, practical, and free, you can join the pilot today.

Apply or learn more at: www.seethroughcarbon.org

“This isn’t about perfection,” I always say.
“It’s about knowing where to start and being able to show the difference you’re making. That’s what clients, staff, and inspectors really care about.”

**

What about you?

If you’d like to participate in See Through Carbon’s carbon reporting ecosystem pilot, you can find details on how it works and how to apply are on the See Through Carbon website.

To enquire about donating goods or services to See Through Carbon, or funding partners to accelerate the development of its accurate, free, open and transparent carbon reporting ecosystem, email: donate@seethroughcarbon.org

To join the team developing the See Through Carbon pilot and implementing in various carbon reporting regulatory regimes around the world, email: volunteer@seethroughcarbon.org