For so many people around the world, it is growing increasingly difficult to see the resetting of the calendar as a step toward better and brighter things – particularly when the impacts of the climate disaster, the cost-of-living crisis, and the Ukraine Russia war are growing more and more severe by the week.

The past few years have made increasingly clear the fact that great swathes of the public are actively looking to support businesses who to hold and support values that align with their own. In other words, for businesses to capture and retain customers, they need to be underpinned by a clear and proactive philosophy – one that prioritises the world beyond their own front doors.

The end of another year, the start of another festive stretch – and a time of mixed feelings for so many people up and down the country. It’s certainly not unusual for December to give way to strange combinations of joy, doubt, worry, relief, and trepidation for the start of a new year. There is, however, something about the close of 2022 that is being more keenly felt by people all around us.

It seems like only yesterday that we were writing on the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26.The year has gone by incredibly quickly – a bit of an unsightly blur of political upheaval (both within and beyond our own borders), natural disaster and, of course, the growing pressure of financial hardship for so many people around the world.

The Queen’s death brings with it a lot of changes for the country, both in the long and short-term. Beginning that transition to life under a new king – the first in more than 70 years, and the first many of us have ever known – has proven more jarring than many of us anticipated, and has prompted us to focus even more attention on the future, even as we take a moment looking back, too.

The first half of 2022 brought with it mixed feelings. On the one hand, those early months were defined by a strong sense of hope as Covid-19 finally began to grow weaker, and many of us began to feel a more recognisable sense of freedom and positivity. On the other hand, however, a growing threat began to loom on the horizon, and we quickly grew accustomed to seeing a new crisis surrounding the world’s energy supplies make headlines.

What started as a peripheral worry has now escalated into one of the most – if not the most – pressing problem we face. In a twist of dark irony, the initial warnings were largely buried under media coverage of the very issues that created it – the disruption of Covid-19, the political tension and subsequent invasion of Ukraine by Russia, inflation, and the ongoing uncertainty caused by our reliance on dwindling and damaging fossil fuels.

If you feel like the media is talking about climate change more than ever, then you’re not alone. The sheer scope of articles coming out on such a wide array of topics, all covered by the dark cloud of climate change, is staggering, even to those who have been clued into the true severity of the ongoing crisis for a long time already.

Despite the better efforts of many organisations and individuals around the country, the energy crisis is continuing to intensify and bear down on countless households and businesses. Just last week, the country’s energy bosses warned MPs that fuel poverty – or, in other words, the inability to afford to heat and light one’s home – could impact as much as 40% of the population come winter.