Chalk ‘n’ Trees: Carbon Offsetting
What is carbon offsetting all about?
Put simply, carbon offsetting allows the purchase of credits that result in prevention or removal of carbon emissions (or other greenhouse gasses) in order to compensate for released emissions. These purchased credits are generated by carbon offsetting projects. A carbon credit equates to one tonne of prevented or removed carbon and once purchased, it is retired from the market to ensure carbon saving. In order to be credible, a carbon credit must be verified by a third party, be permanent and only purchased once, so that it is not counted more than once. Being permanent means that for example, if a forest is planted, it isn’t going to be felled 15 years later. A credit must also have additionality, meaning it is not something that would have happened anyway.
Below we’ve detailed some of the most common types of offsetting projects :
Reforestation and Conservation:
Carbon credits here are allocated based on new trees being planted which will go on to sequester carbon, or living trees being protected to prevent carbon from being released in the future. Nature-based solutions such as this are one of the most popular as they are straightforward, relatively inexpensive and have a multitude of extra benefits. Reforestation fosters habitats, improves biodiversity, supports soil conservation and provides natural flood protection. Projects such as this one exist all over the world, from woodland creation in the UK to rainforest protection in Brazil!
Renewable Energy
Investing in renewable energy offsetting projects supports energy generation from wind, solar and hydro-electricity across the world. Energy is something we all have a huge dependency on, and supporting the transition to renewables reduces reliance on fossil fuels which are a huge contributor to climate change. This can be especially beneficial and in some cases crucial in developing countries which are being encouraged to avoid the use of fossil fuels but cannot afford expensive renewables technology.
Community Projects
These projects cover a broad range of more humanitarian efforts, but all have the aim to provide technology or education to a community to improve energy efficiency and reduce reliance on carbon emitting fuel use. Not only will these projects serve to reduce carbon emissions, but they offer valuable social benefits such as offering safety, empowering people or improving health. For example, a project may provide water filters to improve the health of the people drinking it, and reduce the need for wood fires for boiling water.
Why is there controversy surrounding carbon offsetting?
Carbon offsetting has become somewhat controversial as it can allow companies to continue with unsustainable practices while appearing to be environmentally responsible. Much of this reputation has been caused by the aviation and oil industry. Airline companies have passed a lot of responsibility onto customers, offering carbon offset tickets at a slightly higher rate. Unfortunately, this essentially provides companies with a license to continue polluting the atmosphere, by contributing a portion of the ticket cost to a project. Thankfully, greenwashing such as this is something people are becoming far more aware of, therefore, pressuring companies to do better.
Some cheaper corporate carbon offsetting projects can also pose a risk to local and indigenous communities through the commodification of land and biomass. Due to the growing carbon market, big corporations looking to build new projects can result in the displacement of indigenous people or exclusion from land management practices and biodiversity that they rely on. Ultimately, in a lot of cases this results in conflict between the communities and projects and in some cases, leads to violence. There have been cases of governments removing indigenous people from their land so that corporations can come in and make money from them, often growing monoculture plantations rather than diverse forests. Monoculture plantations may tick the carbon offsetting box, but can negatively impact the soil nutrients and biodiversity. A healthier approach is to plant more than one species of indigenous trees which will support the local ecosystem and habitats. Additionally, there is significant research to suggest that diverse forests are far more efficient in creating a carbon sink than a monoculture plantation.
There is also some uncertainty surrounding the science of carbon offsetting, for example, it is impossible to confidently say how much carbon a tree will sequester. It could die before reaching maturity or not grow to the expected size. This means the carbon offsetting market is based on scientific estimates of future sequestration.
How can carbon offsetting be used responsibly?
One of the most important points to take from this whole blog, is that companies and individuals must do all they can to first limit their own carbon footprint before looking at offsetting. This is the only way carbon offsetting can be genuine and meaningful, otherwise it’s simply another greenwashing campaign. Preventing emissions from entering the atmosphere in the first place is far more beneficial than trying to remove them.
In this fight against climate change, we must make the transition to net-zero. Net-zero refers to calculating one’s emissions and then matching it in contributions to offsetting projects. This works on paper, but less so in reality. Going back to a previous example, an airline company could say they are net-zero through purchasing credits equal to their emissions, but making no effort to reduce their carbon footprint. The future we should aim towards is constant improvements to both technologies that will allow us to continue to reduce our carbon footprint alongside increasing efficiency and contribution to offsetting.
Limiting carbon emissions within business is a fluid activity that is influenced by improving technologies and changes within the business’ operations. Carbon should be calculated and reviewed on a yearly basis, continuously monitoring where further reductions can be made. Only once these yearly improvements are made, should carbon offsets be purchased for the unavoidable emissions.
The actual project a business chooses to invest in is also very important. Firstly, it makes sense to purchase credits for a project that most closely aligns with your business ethos. Another thing to consider is the added benefits of the project, aside from the carbon reduction. Does it have any additional social benefits? Does it have any additional environmental benefits? Always consider the quality of the project. If it is tree planting, is it a monoculture plantation or reforesting many different species? The former will have negative social and environmental impacts on the location, while the latter can help foster biodiversity, flood prevention and much more. A good way of ensuring projects are being correctly managed is searching for Gold Standard or Verified Carbon Standard projects (there are many other standards as well). These projects go through vigorous third party audits to ensure the impacts are positive. After finding a project through these regulators, research it further to make sure you are funding something your company believes in, that’s without controversial or discriminatory practices.
Finally, like everything within the realm of sustainability, transparency is key. All carbon data should be easily accessible to the public as well as information about carbon offsetting contributions. A business should explain which projects they have chosen to support and the reasons why. Not all emissions can be prevented, we accept this and anyone working on their carbon footprint should do also. The key point is making a continuous effort to reduce and offset.
At Gekco all of our products are made here in Yorkshire by our team. Running our own production operation was a crucial choice we made to ensure we have oversight on the quality and performance while ensuring we’re constantly developing and improving our products. It also gives us great insight into the true carbon cost of products and by choosing equipment and processes carefully we’ve drastically reduced our own footprint over what it would have been working with partners. Our first year's footprint genuinely surprised us being much lower than we expected. This means currently we’re excelling on our mission and vision of making the most environmentally friendly liquid chalk, loose chalk and refillable chalk balls in the world!
So how did we at Gekco chose to offset our remaining carbon?
At the end of our first year, we calculated our total emissions, collecting data for Scope 1, 2 and 3. All these numbers can be found in our soon to be published 2020/21 Sustainability Report. Unfortunately, it was very difficult to collect all the data, as it relied heavily on our suppliers, some of which do not yet calculate their own emissions, or at least specifically for the products we use. Therefore, our final figure is assumed to be lower than the actual. To overcome this, we pledged to offset over 200% of the total emissions for the year.
Supported Project 1 - Solar cookers for refugees in Chad:
A Gold Standard verified project that provides 200,000 Sudanese refugees with solar cookers that can be used all year round due to the climate. Firewood in this region is scarce as so many are using it, meaning refugees have to travel further to collect wood, risking assault and abduction. This responsibility often falls to women and children. CooKit was launched in 2005 to tackle this issue.
Benefits of CooKit:
Prevention of carbon emissions through a huge reduction in wood fires
Improvement to safety of women and children especially
Increased school attendance of children
Smokeless cooking has improved the health of refugees
Reduction of wood fires has slowed the rate of deforestation by more than 50%, ensuring carbon remains within the biomass and continued absorption of carbon
Supported Project 2 - Forest Carbon woodland creation and peatland restoration:
These are Woodland Carbon Code verified projects provided by Forest Carbon of which our purchase contributes to three forest creation projects and one peatland restoration across England and Scotland. Not only will woodlands sequester and store carbon, they also foster habitats, support biodiversity and provide natural flood prevention. Peatlands are critical in mitigating climate change and also provide natural flood protection and support biodiversity. These credits are different and are known as ‘ex-ante’, as they invest in future carbon reductions as trees take years to reach full maturity. It was important to us to also invest in the future of the UK, replacing woodland that has historically been chopped down. These cannot immediately be claimed as offset credits, but will become so in the future.