We are Climate Neutral!

We are pleased to announce that we have taken the United Nations Climate Neutral Now Pledge and are delighted to have been verified as ‘Climate Neutral’

What does Climate Neutral mean?

Climate neutrality means reducing our emissions to net zero. This includes all the Green House Gases (GHG) that are harmful to the climate such as CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons.

Currently it is difficult to do this and will take years for the country to develop the infrastructure and technical investment to allow us all to achieve this. So, in the meantime, our strategy is to reduce our emissions as much as possible, commit to continual improvement and invest in emission reduction schemes called offsets.

We also commit to report each year on our progress and (hopefully!) improvement each year.

How did we do it?

Measure:

We have calculated and independently verified all the GHG’s that are emitted in association with the operations of our organisation. We have calculated our full Scope 3 emissions. We created 50.5 tonnes of emissions in 2021.

We wanted to encapsulate as much of our footprint as possible, so we committed to calculating our Scope Three emissions, this includes direct fuel use such as company vehicles, purchased energy use such as electricity and heat, and also our purchased goods and services, employee commutes and energy used by staff while working from home.

Reduce:

We have identified areas of improvement and implemented a strategy to ensure continual improvement.

Offset:

We have offset the remaining GHG emissions in our scope with a Gold Standard UN accredited offset scheme.

Annual emissions in Tonnes of CO2e

We wanted our carbon offset to reflect our support for both the environment and our local communities, we also wanted to see both long term and immediate benefits. We worked with Go Climate Positive to identified offsetting projects which achieve the gold standard UN accreditation and reflect our offsetting goals.

As such, we are delighted to be supporting 2 fantastic projects:

9 Trees

9 Trees create and manage nature rich biodiverse native woodland throughout the UK. Tree planting is a highly beneficial way to offset GHG emissions as it physically removes carbon from the atmosphere and helps to promote biodiversity.

9Trees invest in long term woodlands projects which will be nurtured for at least 50 years, they are experts in planting the right trees in the right places, retaining valuable existing habitats and creating new ones.

We have supported the planting of enough trees to offset our full 50.5 tonnes of emissions for 2021. 9 Trees are conservation experts who know how to best plant a mixture of native species that are selected for each location to match the needs to the wildlife, avoiding creating a monoculture and instead enhancing the diversity in a healthy and sustainable way. We are looking forward to getting involved in the tree planting too.

The downside to tree planting is that it takes time for the trees to grow and for the carbon to be removed, so we also decided to support a more immediate solution.

African Biomass Energy Conservation

African biomass energy conservation in Malawi distributes energy efficient ceramic cooking stoves around Malawi where many households rely on open fires to cook and purify water.

The project is beneficial in that it not only lessens the natural energy demand on the environment by significantly reducing the amount of wood burnt, but it also improves localised air quality, reduces risk of injury from smoke and open flames and therefore improves the health of household members.

It is estimated that 25 jobs are created for every 1000 households that are reached by the project, with 67% of those employed by the project being women who, in many cases, have not previously had a source of income.

We have also supported the offsetting of our full 50.5 tonnes of carbon in Malawi.

You might have noticed that we have doubled up on our offsetting goals for the year…. well, we couldn’t decide between both schemes, which are providing such important work so we did it twice.!