Towards Carbon Positive: How Hello Charlie is Reducing Personal Emissions
Hello Charlie is a values driven business, and one of our core values is to try to leave the world a better place. We’re constantly looking for other ways to improve our sustainability. That includes reducing carbon emissions individually and as a company.
What are carbon emissions?
Carbon emissions are carbon dioxide gases emitted into the Earth's atmosphere. This is mostly produced through human activities. These gases, including carbon dioxide, trap heat energy from the sun and warm the planet.
The main sources of carbon emissions are the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas. Deforestation is also a huge contributor, as trees store CO2 in their leaves and trunk. Emissions from cars and planes and agricultural production also add to climate change.
Knowing your carbon footprint is a way to measure your carbon dioxide emissions. It's the total amount of greenhouse gases (usually measured in tonnes) that a person, product, organisation, or event emits throughout its lifetime. The more greenhouse gases emitted, the greater the carbon footprint.
What does it mean to be climate positive?
Being climate positive (sometimes called carbon positive) is about going beyond aiming for net carbon emissions. It’s more than just being carbon neutral, as you’re reducing more emissions than you are generating. You can further offset carbon emissions by supporting projects that help lower greenhouse gas emissions.
From a business standpoint, being climate positive involves offsetting the carbon footprint of all employees, both personally and professionally. This concept is better known as a “climate positive workforce,” described by Ecologi as follows:
“It is where every person in your organisation has their entire life’s carbon footprint offset because they work within your organisation.
The carbon footprint includes your employee’s time at work, business travel, and their time outside of work.”
What are we doing to try to reduce the carbon footprint of our team members?
As part of our sustainability goals, Hello Charlie is becoming an Ecologi climate positive workforce, and we do this by offsetting the personal emissions of all our team members.
Financing different carbon offset projects worldwide through Ecologi helps offset our employee’s carbon emissions individually and as a team. These can include the reduction in carbon emissions from their family homes, holidays, food, recreations, personal and work travel, and others more.
How can we prove that these offsets for carbon emissions are worth doing?
Ecologi has an excellent track record. They give detailed documentation to prove that making our small business and workforce climate positive is worth doing.
Each month, Ecologi publishes certificates of how many tonnes of carbon dioxide (carbon credits) were removed or prevented from going into the atmosphere. We're assured that these efforts have a high and significant impact, as they meet high quality verification standards such as the Gold Standard and Verified Carbon Standard.
What’s good about funding these projects is that their impact is holistic, too. We aren’t only guaranteed that carbon offset metrics are met through sustainability and development standards like the CCBS and SD Vista. These standards also help ensure there are community impacts and align with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Planting trees doesn’t immediately offset carbon (not until around a decade later). But the audit report from Eden Reforestation Projects in Madagascar proves that this forward thinking climate action works. It ensures that there’s a high survival rate among planted trees.
How are we going in terms of offsetting carbon emissions?
As of April 2022, Hello Charlie has been a climate positive workforce for 11 months. This translates to the following accomplishments:
- We’ve reduced 188.02 tonnes of carbon emissions
- We’ve helped plant 9,543 trees across different countries worldwide
This carbon offset, particularly the tonnes of emissions reduced by Hello Charlie’s work with Ecologi, is equal to the following:
- 144 long haul flights
- 564 square metres of sea ice saved
- 466,478 miles driven in a car
Finally, our partnership with Ecologi is just one of our various efforts in reducing the carbon footprint of our company. We're serious about carbon offsetting. We've been integrating this practice into every aspect of our business - from reducing the amount of new packaging we buy to using 100% renewable GreenPower to power our warehouse.
We're doing this because we want to make a difference, leaving our planet a better place. And we want to help our customers to make a better choice and shop sustainably, too. Our children's future is in our hands, and every positive choice that we make, no matter how small, makes a difference.