Cutting carbon emissions and caring for our climate
Cutting our carbon emissions and caring for our climate is high on our business agenda. One of the steps in our carbon management journey is carbon offsetting.
We’ve been working closely with a company called Carbon Footprint to build our sustainability values. They’ve recently completed an incredibly in-depth assessment of our business’s carbon emissions and we’ve selected three community projects from across the globe, to invest in and offset our carbon emissions, which will make our operations carbon neutral.
Carbon offsetting plays the role of balancing out the emissions that have already been generated by our operations – from the energy and water we use, the miles driven by our fleet or vans, company cars and private cars, as well as the waste created across our seven sites. By financially supporting projects around the world that help provide solutions towards climate change (i.e. decarbonising electricity grids, reducing deforestation, improving energy efficiency, sequestering carbon etc.), not only are we helping local communities in developing countries, but we are offsetting our emissions.
Following the assessment we learned that our total carbon emissions for the year was 353 tCO2e. Carbon Footprint then provided us with details of a range of sustainability and community care projects that we could support in our efforts to neutralise our emissions. Our business owners considered all the options and selected three projects that they felt supported a large scope of the United Nations’ Sustainability goals, including climate action, gender equality, good health and well-being, life on land, and affordable and clean energy.
The projects we are supporting this year include:
1. Energy Efficient Cook Stove Implementation in India
This project involves providing improved cooking stoves (ICS) to socially deprived communities in India. It is replacing the less efficient traditional stoves with new more efficient stoves that will reduce the exposure of the family members, specifically women, to indoor air pollution and therefore result in saving of health related expenses.
This project is expected to save over 350,000 tCO2e during the 10 year crediting period (2019 to 2029). Each cookstove will reduce emissions by approximately 1.46 tonnes of CO2e per year. To achieve the initial targeted volume of emission reductions, the project aims to disseminate over 25,000 cookstoves to homes in India.
2. Pacajai REDD+ Project in the Amazon
This project is working to prevent unplanned deforestation in native Amazon forests, which has occurred due to logging, squatting and attempts to implement pastures. It is expected to avoid over 22 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas emissions over a 40-year period.
This will be achieved by managing the land in the form of a "private conservation reserve", through rigorous monitoring and enforcement. From 2012 the project has scaled-up its monitoring activities by employing and properly training local villagers for monitoring and enforcement activities.
3. Talas De Maciel 2 Wind Farm in Uruguay
The purpose of this project is to generate clean renewable electricity from wind power and supply it to the national grid of Uruguay. Electricity is generated from renewable sources through the construction and operation of a 50 MW wind farm, located in the Southeast region of Uruguay.
The power plant will have an expected operating life of 20 years and will displace a total amount of 191,854 MWh/year from the national power grid, generating, emission reductions of 119,427 tCO2 per year, on average.
Unfortunately at the present time, generating CO2 emissions is unavoidable. However, we are working hard to reduce our emissions, but in the meantime, are happy and humbled to support these incredible projects and neutralise our annual emissions.
You can read more about our efforts to operate a sustainable business, including our sustainable product choices, our ISO140001 accreditation and other sustainability initiatives.
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