carbon certification for organisations

Introduction

Carbon certification is the primary mechanism that your company can use to broadcast your environmental credentials.

We offer three levels of certification (Carbon Aware, Carbon Neutral and Carbon Free), plus a booster pack called Carbon Lifestyle, all of which are described in more detail below.

On the page entitled business types, we discuss the suitability of the three certification types to various market sectors.

Carbon certification is usually achieved by offsetting emissions through the purchase of carbon credits, most commonly by getting us to plant tropical trees on your behalf. These purchases may be made either directly by your company or by your customers in the form of carbon surcharges.

Once a company has achieved certification, it can apply the relevant endorsement logo to its marketing material, in order to add positivity to the brand, drive sales and increase customer loyalty.

The carbon certification process is usually carried out during the production of an Environmental Strategy Report and is also subject to an annual review.

Carbon aware

Carbon aware is the entry level certification. It tends to work well for companies which are just getting started with the whole process and want to keep their initial expenditure to a minimum.

Being carbon aware does not involve you paying to offset any part of your business.

You simply offer your customers the option to offset the carbon footprint of the products that they buy from you, which typically adds around 0.2-0.8% to invoice values.

We can help you set this system up in such a way that you can purchase the appropriate quantity of offsets from us retrospectively and we will then plant the requisite number of tropical trees.

You simply need to track the value of each product type for which your customers have purchased carbon credits.

For the proportion of your turnover for which customers have chosen not to take up the option, you are not obliged to pick up the tab and the carbon debt remains unpaid. Becoming carbon aware is therefore not an ideal solution from an environmental perspective, but it is a decent step in the right direction.

A major appeal of this level of certification is that it lets your customers know that you are at least aware of the environment, it typically involves very little direct cost to the company and the offsets can represent a source of additional income, as they carry a modest retail margin.

Carbon neutral

Carbon neutral is a popular and widely recognised level of certification that is suited to a very wide range of forward-thinking brands.

Being carbon neutral means that you pay to offset the carbon footprint of your company infrastructure, but you do not take responsibility for the carbon footprint of your product (which remains the responsibility of your consumers).

For services companies (which do not generate a physical product) carbon neutral is the highest achievable level of certification.

Carbon neutral is usually simple to achieve, with the relevant data being assessed directly from your Environmental Strategy Report. You simply need to purchase the appropriate quantity of carbon credits (usually in the form of tropical trees) to offset your emissions.

The process is usually relatively low cost, especially in subsequent years when you only need to pay for the natural wastage of trees that were planted in the first year.

Carbon neutral minus

In cases where the initial costs of going carbon neutral are prohibitively high, we offer a three year on-ramp option known as Carbon Neutral Minus, in which we specifically excluding emissions derived from taxation and professional services.

Carbon free

Carbon free is the highest level of certification and is usually associated with manufacturing brands whose customers are highly responsive to positive environmental messaging.

Going carbon free means that you take full responsibility for the carbon footprints created by both your company infrastructure and the products that you sell.

The first part is done by the payment of a fixed annual fee, based upon the emissions calculated in your Environmental Strategy Report.

The second part can be done either by adding carbon supplements to your customer invoices (typically around 0.2-0.8% of the total value) or by direct payment by the company.

If you ask your customers to pay, then you will need to track the items for which your customers have purchased carbon credits, in order to know how many trees you need to purchase from us.

Since Carbon Free dictates that you are taking full responsibility for all emissions, for any proportion below 80% of your turnover for which customers have chosen not to purchase credits, you will need to settle the outstanding carbon debt. The level of uptake is therefore critical in defining the cost to the company.

You can test the water by trialing surcharges at the Carbon Aware level and then take on the additional responsibility of Carbon Free certification once you have an understanding of how to achieve suitable take-up rates.

We can guide you through this whole process.

Carbon lifestyle

Carbon lifestyle is a supplementary option, which can be added to the previous three levels to create Carbon Aware Lifestyle, Carbon Neutral Lifestyle and Carbon Free Lifestyle.

In this scenario, your organisation takes responsibility for the total carbon footprints of your staff, making their lives completely carbon neutral.

This represents an extraordinarily positive step, one which suits a relatively small cohort of dynamic forward-thinking companies, but it can represent quite a costly undertaking.

Where your members of staff are the primary wage earners, this measure can often be extended to cover their immediate families for relatively little additional cost.

Read more about the enormously uplifting feeling of living a carbon free lifestyle.

How to get started

Before you can achieve carbon certification, it is necessary to create an Environmental Strategy Report, so we recommend that you read that page if you haven’t yet already done so.

The whole process is outlined in much more detail on the page entitled Services and costs.

If you are ready to stick a toe in the water or have any questions, then please click here to get started.

Next article

Organisation types

The most appropriate approach for your company will be defined by what it is that you do. In this section we take a look at a dozen different industry sectors and try to summarise appropriate approaches for each.