After a lot of soul searching, we have decided to…
We’re excited to announce a new sustainability partnership with Zellar. We’re using their platform to reduce our emissions even more.
We went Carbon Neutral in 2019, and with the guidance of Zellar we’re working towards Net Zero.
“What’s the difference?” I hear you ask.
Carbon neutral refers to a policy of not increasing carbon emissions and of achieving carbon reduction through offsets. While net zero carbon means making changes to reduce carbon emissions to the lowest amount – and offsetting as a last resort.
We’re in between the two. We’ve already taken several steps to reduce our emissions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, so it’s not just the case that we’re simply doing business the dirty way and then paying our way out of it with offsets, but there is still more we can do to reduce our footprint. With the guidance of Zellar we’ve made some simple improvements to our heating system and we’re diving deeper into our supply chain to make the best decisions we can there.
We’ve also triple-offset our leftover emissions. With Zellar’s dashboard we calculated 1,234 (honestly!) kg of emissions from our company. This is good news, it was 1782 when I did the calculations back in 2019, so we’re moving in the right direction!
Calculations
To be able to compare our progress with last time, I have also done my own calculations using the same method as before. These calculations are for the 21 month period January 2020 – October 2021:
Elec use 7457 units = 4261 per year = 1129 kg CO2e2 per year1
LPG use 495 litres = 283 litres per year = 473 kg CO2e per year2 This is higher than it was before, simply because the previous calculation period included about 6 months before the heating system worked in the building!
1602 kg of CO per year, or a total of 2803 kg over the past 21 months. This is a reduction of 10% since the last time we did the calculations, despite the fact that our heating system worked for the whole of this calculation period!
I think the main difference between Zellars calculation and ours is the emissions factor for our electricity useage. They take into account the fact that our supplier is Ecotricity, which brings our emissions down significantly. I think their method is more accurate, and it’s their number that I’ve triple-offset (7 tonnes of CO2), but as I want to be able to track our progress over time I’ve used the same method as before for my own calculations. It’s a pessimistic method, but that’s ok.
1Updated CO2 emission factor of 0.265 kge/kWh
2CO2 emission factor of 3.01 kge/kg, where 1 litre = 0.537 kg
We offset 3 tonnes of CO2 by supporting a wind farm project in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. It has has goal of generating 110 GWh of clean electricity annually, which is equivalent to powering 25,500 households every year.
We bought 2 tonnes (2000kg) of offset to support Toms Wood in Yorkshire. This tree planting project includes birch and sycamore, 2 of the woods that we make our harps out of, so it felt like a good fit.
We also offset 2 tonnes (2000kg) of carbon with a sustainable forestry project in Uruguay, converting degraded grazing land to sustainable and high value timber production. As well as sucking CO2 out of the air, this also provides jobs for local people.
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