🌱 Carbon Handprints: How IKEA are flicking the switch on renewable energy.
Featuring Truestart Coffee, Huel, Patagonia and more...
Happy Friday!
This week we cover:
We've all heard of Carbon Footprints. So what's a 'Carbon Handprint'?
Insetting at IKEA: It’s a collaborative thing.
In case you missed it: Meet the Brands: Pip & Nut are taking a crack at Net Zero, featuring Pip Murray, Founder and CEO.
Don’t forget - we are listing the 21 brand initiatives we’ve loved in 2021. Submit your choices here. We also have roles open in our team - check them out!
> Good News This Week
🎯 Truestart Coffee achieved B Corp certification.
🎯 Toast Ale have partnered with Cafedirect, the UK’s first Fair-trade coffee brand, on a new Coffee Porter as part of its companion series.
🎯 Beauty Kitchen UK has launched a new ‘Re’ programme, aiming to eliminate FMCG single-use plastic packaging. Unilever, Asda and ELEMIS have already signed up. Their aim is to save 100 million bottles from landfill.
🎯 Benugo has worked with ClimatePartner to provide a carbon footprint comparisons on its in-store products. They’re also offsetting all unavoidable emissions from cradle-to-grave from their menu.
⭐️ Patagonia announced all of their record breaking $10 million in sales from Black Friday will be donated grassroots environmental groups. Their community called it a ‘fundraiser for the earth’.
⭐️ KP Snacks announced its begun implementing regenerative farming practices, including cover crop planting, at two ‘pilot’ potato farms in the UK. Their Sustainable Futures Programme is in partnership with Consultancy Future Food Solutions.
⭐️ Morrisons has partnered with Better Origin in 10 of their free range egg farms to convert their food waste into insects to feed their hens. This is part of a move to release own brand ‘carbon neutral’ eggs next year.
⚡️ The Ellen MacArthur Foundation released ‘Circular Design for Fashion’, a book which outlines their vision for a circular fashion economy.
> Click on each link to read more.
> Quick Take
We've all heard of Carbon Footprints. So what's a 'Carbon Handprint'?
A lot of progress was made at COP26. Yet many are left with the feeling that we must, and can, do more. Doing the minimum isn’t enough anymore: we need to actively do something and make real change. This sense of frustration can be harnessed for real progress, and this is what a ‘Carbon Handprint’ is all about. If footprints are seen as the unintended scars we leave on the earth, then handprints can be the deliberate symbols of our presence on the planet - demonstrating our positive impact.
Businesses are always looking to leave their mark, and there’s no shortage of help out there to help you turn your footprint into a handprint. Go Climate Positive works with businesses (ranging from e-retailers and, gin and tea bars to tile shops) to tackle their scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions (read more about ‘scopes’ here). Businesses are not only given help to reduce their direct emissions, they are equipped to help their partners and suppliers reduce theirs. This isn’t new - in fact, carbon insetting is how it’s often referred to.
Fundamental to the creation (and image) of a Carbon Handprint is the concept of positivity. A business that goes beyond investing in reducing its own direct impact, to investing in helping it’s supply chain reduce theirs, truly understands the positive net effects of its actions.
Regenerative agriculture is becoming a buzzword (or phrase), and funding regenerative agricultural practices in your supply chain is the perfect example of creating a Carbon Handprint. It’s not just using resources reservingly, preservingly. It’s about actively creating better resources and practices, and helping the planet in the process. It’s positive. Soil Heroes are fast-becoming the go-to for businesses to implement the practice in their supply chains. Huel, Patagonia and allplants all boast partnerships with the organisation (watch this space for an interview with up-and-comers allplants)!
Brands are increasingly taking the initiative and realising their potential for good. Burberry, for instance, has recently established a ‘Carbon Insetting’ fund, implementing regenerative agriculture projects across its supply chain. Where carbon offsets aim to reduce emissions through projects entirely separate to business’ practices, insetting regenerates what businesses use, where they use them. Where offsets (theoretically) neutralise your footprint, insetting aims to positively produce a handprint.
Want help creating your own handprint?
Go Climate Positive’s membership levels.
Check out Soil Heroes for tips on implementing regenerative agricultural practices.
The Sustainable Procurement Pledge are a great place to help you get to grips with your supply chain. Read our take on it here.
Haven’t subscribed to Following the Footprints yet?
> Brand Spotlight
Insetting at IKEA: It’s a collaborative thing.
Ikea are aiming to become climate positive by 2030. The largest furniture store in the world, with 12,000 products listed on its website, that’s an ambitious goal - and IKEA know they can’t achieve it alone.
“Our ambition is to reduce more greenhouse gas emissions in absolute terms by 2030 than the entire IKEA value chain emits, while growing the IKEA business. To reach this goal, we will continue to invest in areas that create impact.”
Aside from their plethora of sustainability initiatives and responsible sourcing standards (including being a 1.5C Supply Chain Leaders member), we are keen to focus on their carbon handprint in their transition to renewable energy. Almost two-thirds of the IKEA climate footprint is directly connected to its supply chain. Reducing this is a challenge, but IKEA have a plan…
How to achieve 100% renewable energy in the supply chain:
To support the ambition to use 100% renewable energy throughout their supply chain by 2030, IKEA are providing support to their suppliers to accelerate their transition to using renewable energy across all uses - heating, cooling and more. Supporting 1,600 direct suppliers, it will enable them to purchase renewable energy - particularly in areas where it is hard to access. Here, IKEA will provide local solutions such as bundled framework agreements and Power Purchase Agreements.
Currently being rolled out, if achieved it will save 670000 tonnes of CO2 per year, equivalent to ~3% of the total climate footprint of the IKEA value chain. Support can be accessed via the IKEA Supplier Portal.
This doesn’t come cheap. They’ve invested a cool €200 million on their renewable energy initiatives and carbon capture investment efforts combined - which is far from achievable for the average brand. However, for their scale, it’s inspiring to see a global brand invest heavily beyond their own walls.
> In case you missed it
💥 #7 - Meet the Brands: Pip & Nut are taking a crack at Net Zero.
Featuring Pip Murray, Founder and CEO.
