Here's what you'll need to do...
01 Measure
Small Brands: 1-2 hours
Large Brands: 1-3 months (including data aggregation)
Measure emissions and assess the carbon impacts of all of your products and services from cradle to customer.
It all starts here: with a solid inventory of the carbon emissions from making and delivering your products and services. Your measurement will include Scopes 1, 2, and upstream Scope 3 emissions (per the Greenhouse Gas Protocol).
You may already have this step nailed. Or measurement may sound overwhelming, expensive, and complex. Don’t worry. We’ve simplified the process through extensive guided content and our software tool, the Business Emissions Evaluator, or “BEE.”
FAQs
What are Scopes 1, 2, 3 emissions?
Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions represent the entirety of a carbon footprint from a company’s activities.
- Scope 1 are direct emissions that come from controlled facilities. This can include the fuel you burn in company vehicles, the natural gas you use to heat your office, or any direct emissions from owned manufacturing plants.
- Scope 2 are indirect emissions. This is mostly your purchased electricity.
- Scope 3 are indirect emissions from your supply chain – that means emissions released from extracting raw materials used for finished products, corporate business travel, employee commuting, shipping and transporting, and more. In most cases, Scope 3 makes up a majority of a company’s footprint.
What Scope 3 categories do you measure?
Our certification requires that you measure Scope 3 Categories 1-7 and 9. Check out our Standard to learn more about measurement boundary requirements.
For Example
Your company, InTents is a tents company headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with most of its manufacturing based in China. The company had $80M in revenue in 2022.
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If you have a measurement plan with a software provider or consultant, you create a report matching our boundary and measurement requirements for the full year 2022.
Or, you hop into the BEE, and drop in a headquarters location (United States), annual spending ($50M), and spending broken down by product. The BEE provides you with a high-level estimate of your emissions of 67,145 tonnes of carbon equivalent. Your team then refines this estimate using activity data to match your specific operating activities. Your preliminary refined emissions calculation is 63,150 tCO2e.
You take your external report or the report from the BEE and submit it to our certification team for review. If your revenues were >$100m, you would need to accompany this submission with an external verification report.
02 Reduce
1 week to develop plan.
1 to 2 years to implement.
Reduce value chain carbon emissions, and annually document plans and progress toward emissions reductions.
We require all brands to develop and implement reduction action plans (RAPs) to reduce emissions over the next 12-24 months. We're looking for concrete next steps your team is ready to implement.
Brands with over $100M in annual revenues are required to set science aligned reduction targets to reduce emissions ~50% by 2030.
We offer guides, templates, and tools to help you determine where, and how, you can reduce your emissions. Our network of 340+ brands is also an incredible resource for crafting your reduction action plans.
FAQs
What's a reduction plan?
Do we need quantitative reduction goals?
You do not need to quantify your reduction goals in tonnes of carbon, but we recommend it. For example, saying “We’ll switch our materials to recycled materials” is OK, but “We’ll switch 70% of our aluminum purchases to recycled aluminum” is a better goal. An even better option is to align with Science Based Targets, developing a target like “We’re committing to buying 100% green power in 2021, which will reduce our Scope 2 emissions by 22 tonnes of carbon.”
How are we held accountable for reductions?
You will be required to report on your reduction progress annually. Your progress is measured in % completion for each RAP, and is included on your brand profile page on our website.
You will also be required to report on quantitative reduction progress during "checkpoint" years. More information on this is available in our Standard.
For Example
Your team at InTents noticed a large portion of your emissions were coming from purchased materials and business travel.
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You buy a lot of polyester material, aluminum, and packaging paper and cardboard. You consult with your product design team and decide to switch 20% of your materials to recycled versions, which are far less carbon-intensive.
Another big source of emissions was the amount of corporate air travel, so your team will rely on video calls to cut down air travel by 20%, based on a new travel policy that you will implement next quarter.
03 Compensate
Up to 2 weeks to complete and document your purchase.
Compensate for all of last year's emissions by purchasing eligible verified carbon and clean energy credits to avoid and/or remove an equivalent amount. That’s how you become “neutral”: one carbon credit removes or avoids one tonne of carbon emissions. Projects like reforestation remove carbon from the atmosphere, while renewable energy avoids emissions from fossil fuels.
FAQs
What is a carbon credit?
How are carbon credits verified?
Voluntary carbon credits are overseen through a process of third-party verification under published methodologies. Climate Neutral relies on this system, with a few of our own modifications to help us add confidence that we’re only recognizing projects that generate credits using trustworthy and rigorous standards.
These are the registries that Climate Neutral recognizes under our 2023 Standard:
These groups set the bar for the market by laying out a process that ensures carbon credits meet the ‘big six’ requirements: real, permanent, quantifiable, verifiable, enforceable, and additional. Any credit listed on one of the registries above must undergo rigorous independent third-party verification.
How much does it cost?
Offsetting your company’s entire carbon footprint is probably cheaper than you would think. A good estimate is that it will cost about 0.4%-0.8% of your annual revenue. This assumes you're paying $10-20 per tonne. So if your revenue for 2022 is projected to be $100M, you can expect to pay about $500,000 to offset your emissions for the year. This money goes toward mitigating your emissions immediately, while you work on longer term reductions.
What types of carbon credits can be used for the Climate Neutral certification?
To encourage strong and well-rounded portfolios, we maintain a set of eligible verified carbon credit standards to outline the types of credits that count toward certification. To make it easy to find eligible credits, we offer a directory of qualified providers that can be accessed through Climate Neutral's certification portal.
For Example
Since InTents’ carbon footprint for 2021 was 63,150 tonnes of carbon, you have to purchase at least 63,150 carbon credits to completely offset your footprint.
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InTents purchased credits from a provider listed in Climate Neutral's Provider Directory, which included:
- 33,573 credits for a forest conservation project in the Amazon.
- 20,143 credits for a water filtration project in India.
- 13,429 credits for a small-scale hydropower project in China.
InTents spent an average of $10 per tonne on credits, meaning you spent $631,500 to offset your entire emissions, in line with the estimate (at 0.8% of annual revenues, which were $80M in 2022).
