Impact

The Sustainable Development Goals are the blueprint to achieving a better and more sustainable future. They address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, peace and justice. CarbonClick ensures that all of our projects are contributing to a minimum of three SDGs, as the co-benefits of climate projects, such as improved health and decent work are very important. UN website here.

  • There are so many good resources available to educate and inspire us to take climate action. Here are are some good places to start:
    • Check out Gen Less’ site to find out how you personally can embrace a lifestyle that uses less energy: https://genless.govt.nz/
    • Stuff’s article 10 tips for business to reduce their emissions is a good place to start for actions your workplace can take.
    • For individual action, check out WWF’s guide here.

  • CarbonClick recommends that businesses take climate change action along the following lines:
    • Step 1: Measure. You must know the sources of your emissions before doing anything else. We can help you do this, or work with you to engage industry leading consultancies.
    • Step 2: Reduce. Once you know your emissions sources, find ways to reduce or completely avoid these emissions. Start with the “low hanging fruit” such as improved energy efficiency or electrification of transport, and then build further reductions into your emissions roadmap.
    • Step 3: Offset. For any emissions leftover once these emissions reduction goals are realised, offsetting is key to reducing any business’ impact to ‘net zero’. The UN Sustainable Development Goals can be achieved in tandem with carbon offsetting, because the projects supported often have positive social and economic benefits in the local communities in which they take place.

Emissions

Some businesses cover their internal emissions (such as energy for powering their offices, fuel for powering their team vehicles), but this doesn’t usually include the emissions for the materials used to make your product, or the emissions of the product you are buying if that business isn’t the manufacturer and hasn’t factored in supply chain emissions. And lastly, usually the distribution (shipping) to you and the end of life emissions are not factored in either. By choosing to offset, you are making a huge impact, to compensate for some or all of the emissions associated with the product you are buying. In some cases you might even be over-compensating, meaning you are saving our planet rather than just not having further impact on it.

Congratulations on taking steps towards reducing your emissions and being part of the fight against climate change. Offsetting is part of the larger journey towards ‘net zero’ carbon, as not all emissions can be avoided and reduced. For these emissions, offsetting is the only way to neutralise your environmental impact. Plus, it’s an action you can take right now, no matter where you are on your sustainability journey.

Carbon emissions is a generalised term to describe greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere, which are often carbon based such as carbon dioxide and methane (CH4). These gases have global warming potential, meaning they trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere, contributing to global warming and climate change. Carbon emissions come from activities such as the burning of fossil fuels (carbon dioxide) and the digestion systems of livestock (methane).

Carbon offsetting

A carbon credit is mechanism used to measure and support projects that fight climate change. For every tonne of CO2 that a project manages to absorb or otherwise reduce, a carbon credit is issued. Carbon credits are certified by international standards and held in registries like the Gold Standard registry (international credits) and can be purchased to reduce the carbon impact of an initiative or activity.

Voluntary carbon offsetting is a way to compensate for unavoidable carbon emissions. To do this, organisations support projects that positively impact the environment and reduce or avoid carbon emissions that would have otherwise contributed to climate change. If the positive impact of this support negates the negative impact they have, ie: if the emissions avoided equal the original emissions of an activity, that activity is said to be “offset”.  In most circumstances, the activity or product can now be classified as carbon neutral as far as you’ve offset. Alternatively, a business may be able to offset this themselves and claim carbon neutrality or net zero carbon.

Funds

  • To be successful and deliver impact on a global scale, our business needs to be sustainable. We need to cover costs such as wages, quality assurance, administration and transaction fees. Our sources of revenue are:
    • We take a 20% margin on the carbon credits.
    • We charge varied SaaS fees depending on what products our customers need
    • Our e-commerce plugin is priced as a Freemium model, where some customers will pay a monthly fee to get additional features in their store.
    • We are backed by seed fund investment so that we can remain sustainable as our business scales up.

Reach out to us at [email protected] to find out about our pricing.

  • For nature-based climate solutions, we only work with reputable brokers who work directly with landowners who can give us full end-to-end transparency on the forest and movement of credits.
  • For international offsets, we purchase from global voluntary offset market platforms like the UNFCCC, Carbon Trade Exchange, from brokers like Umwelt-Projekt-Management GmbH and CarbonBay. The projects sourced from all over the developing world. Information about particular projects is available to view on our projects page.

Our offsets

  • CarbonClick follows industry best practice to ensure that the offsets we provide have a real, measurable impact on reducing climate change. By ensuring our projects are of the highest quality, CarbonClick seeks to reduce reputational risks and maximize the impact our customers are having by taking the following steps:
  • For international projects, we only short-list projects that comply with our independently verified selection methodology, which uses many of the same stringent requirements of ICROA Code of Best Practice.
  • For New Zealand based projects, we purchase units registered under the Permanent Forestry Sink Initiative.
  • We only select projects certified to the highest international standards, and seek projects that contain co-benefits wherever possible.
  • Our selected projects undergo a qualitative review by our network of industry experts.

  • For New Zealand based projects, CarbonClick buys credits certified under the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme and the Permanent Forest Sink Initiative.
  • Internationally, we only fund carbon offset projects which have been certified by the most reputable registries, such as the Gold Standard, Verra Carbon Standard and the American Carbon Registry. These standards provide a methodology framework, independent verification process, and a registry to ensure emissions reductions are real, additional, permanent and unique.

  • To enable our unique track and trace feature, CarbonClick pre-purchases carbon credits. Our transparent reimbursement model means that you can immediately see the retirement certificates from the projects you are supporting and know your contribution is having a direct impact.
  • A key feature of a carbon offsetting project is additionality, which means the project could not go ahead without the finance of carbon credits. We rigorously analyse our projects to ensure that additionality criteria is being met and your money is having a direct impact.