Helping Hopscotch turn good intentions into a measured baseline, and actionable reduction plan

About Hopscotch

Hopscotch supports local families with early years education and care, and has done consistently for over 35 years.

“We support local families by providing warm, nurturing early years education and care, where children feel safe, settled and confident as they learn through play, build friendships and discover the world around them.”

Sustainability is part of that picture, and the team are proud to integrate that into day-to-day nursery teachings, by getting ‘hopscotchers’ actively involved in recycling, and nature conservation. Many of the parents who choose Hopscotch care about it too, and it has become a core part of how the nurseries talk to families.

“Caring for the environment has always been part of who we are. We encourage children to respect and care for the world around them every day, so it’s important that we hold ourselves to the same standard as a business. Measuring our impact also helps us be open with our team, families and local community about the progress we’re making and where we know there’s still more to do.”

The Challenge

Hopscotch had already made real progress, investing in solar at its sites and moving to electric vehicles, but it had no way to measure the impact of these initiatives.

“The biggest barrier was simply knowing where to start. We wanted to understand our carbon footprint, but it wasn’t always clear what we needed to measure or how to bring all the information together in a meaningful way.”

The footprint also raised questions specific to childcare, such as how to handle waste streams like nappies, and dealing with this complexity felt daunting.

“As a childcare provider, our emissions come from lots of different areas of the business rather than one single source, which made the process feel quite daunting at first. We needed a clear framework that would help us measure our impact consistently and give us confidence that the decisions we were making were based on accurate information.”

How Seedling Helped

Hopscotch has a small central team, without a dedicated sustainability lead, so it needed something it could work through without taking up too much of their time.

“We needed software that felt manageable and that we could work through properly alongside the day-to-day.”

Two parts of the platform stood out. The first was Seedling’s integrations with accounting software:

“The platform made it much easier to bring together the information we needed, particularly by allowing us to download spend data directly from our accounting software. That gave us a solid starting point and saved a lot of time.”

The second was the in-built employee survey, to streamline data collection:

“It was simple to share with our teams, and the responses fed straight into the emissions data, making it much easier to capture information that we might otherwise have struggled to gather.”

Alongside the platform, Seedling’s expert support made a difference too.

“It was also useful that Seedling is UK-based and familiar with the context we operate in. Having account manager support gave us somewhere to go with questions, particularly around areas of carbon measurement that are less obvious for a childcare business.”

The Impact

Hopscotch now has a full-scope GHG emissions report, which can be used as a clear baseline with which to measure future impact. They also have an evidence-backed reduction plan, allowing them to prioritise the actions that will have the most impact, and a structure for making continued progress – importantly, it’s something concrete to share with families and staff.

“Working with Seedling has helped us turn good intentions into meaningful action. We now have a much clearer understanding of our carbon footprint and where we can make the biggest difference.”

Looking Ahead

Hopscotch’s advice to other businesses is to begin without waiting for certainty, and to get the right support.

“Our advice would be to just get started. It can feel like a big task at first, but you don’t need to have all the answers before you begin. Once you have a clearer picture of your carbon footprint, it becomes much easier to see where you can make meaningful changes.”

“We’d also recommend finding the right support. Having a clear process and someone to guide us through it made a real difference. It took something that felt quite daunting and turned it into a series of manageable steps, which gave us the confidence to keep moving forward.”