Why being a Climate Positive organisation is important (and what it all means!)

The Ākina team are proud to announce we have become a climate positive accredited organisation through working with ekos – a non-profit enterprise that provides carbon measurement services and carbon zero certification.

Becoming climate positive accredited means we’ve proven that we have measured and offset 120% of our carbon footprint for our entire business operations for the previous financial year. To do this, every emission of carbon from the business was calculated and then offset by the growing and protecting of indigenous forest. It’s been quite the journey!

As we kicked things off, we came across a whole lot of language that we needed to get really clear on the meaning of. With ‘climate’ or ‘carbon’ appearing in many of the terms in this space, things can get confusing pretty quickly. Here’s a bit of a list of terms it was most important to understand:

Carbon footprint: This is the amount of carbon dioxide (otherwise known as carbon or CO2) emissions released into the atmosphere as a result of an organisation’s activities. CO2 is one of many greenhouse gases (or GHGs) causing climate change. 

Carbon Zero and Carbon Neutral: This means that carbon dioxide emissions attributable to an organisation (in this case) have been balanced out by funding an equivalent amount of carbon savings elsewhere in the world. This balancing out is referred to as carbon offsetting.

Carbon offsetting: A form of trade when buying an offset (or carbon credit), a project that reduces carbon emissions is funded – for example, an initiative that supports forest restoration.

Climate Positive and Carbon Negative: As well as balancing out carbon emissions attributable to an organisation through offsetting, even more carbon is removed from the atmosphere through additional offsetting.

So, using those terms altogether – Ākina measured our carbon footprint, then purchased carbon credits to offset our footprint by 120% in order to become climate positive certified. 

Why is it important for Ākina to be Climate Positive?

It’s pretty clear that climate change presents the biggest challenge of our time. At Ākina, creating positive impact is at the heart of the work we do with our clients and partners – so it’s important to us that we are operating in an environmentally-friendly way.

On top of this, our vision is of a sustainable, prosperous, inclusive New Zealand and world, and becoming Climate Positive enables us to move towards that. We chose to take the extra step to become Climate Positive, rather than settle for Carbon Zero, because that acknowledges the urgency of the problem, and demonstrates a commitment to being part of the solution.

This year Ākina lead the New Zealand leg of the Not Business As Usual campaign to get businesses to take action to support the School Strike 4 Climate action that took place in September. The following month we joined Gen Zero and WWF-NZ in calling for businesses to urge cross-party support for the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill. Becoming Climate Positive helps us continue to operate in a way that embodies our values.

With just 17 full time employees we know we’re only a drop in the ocean when it comes to global emissions, but if we’re serious about tackling the climate crisis, we believe we need to see action from all corners of business, government and society.

The ultimate goal of course, is to help keep the planet within a 1.5 degree rise above pre-industrial temperatures, in order to mitigate the worst effects of man-made climate change. The reduction of carbon dioxide emitted by human activity is one way of doing this.

Though we’ll likely need to innovate new solutions to tackle the climate crisis worldwide, it is also important to focus on the impact that we can have both individually and collectively – taking advantage of the solutions that are currently available. Carbon offsetting is definitely one of the solutions. If you’d like to find out more about carbon offsetting there’s a great breakdown on the ekos website.

Members of the Ākina Team on the School Strike 4 Climate march in September 2019

What was the process like? 

There’s a number of different organisations out there who can help you measure and offset, including a number of free self-measurement tools. We chose Ekos (more on this later), who supplied us with a calculator and very helpfully guided us through the process.  

Step one is measurement.

A year is the suggested period to measure by international standards, so first we picked FY18/19 – the previous financial year. We then identified the areas of the business that cause emissions.

For Ākina – and this will be the same for many office based SMEs around New Zealand – our key emission areas were business travel, that’s flights, taxis, mileage, public transport, hotels), purchased energy (electricity), and materials and waste (waste sent to landfill). We then retrospectively collected data about usage and outputs in these areas to help calculate our carbon footprint. 

Electricity and waste
Since we work out of a number of shared spaces this involved a lot of help from landlords and office managers, gathering together things like invoices from electricity suppliers and waste collection providers. We then made estimates based on the amount of office space we occupied. 

Travel
For most of our flights, we were able to pull the data from our travel management platform, but there were a number of flights booked outside the system which we tracked via self reporting and finding expense claims. Taxis and ride-sharing were similar – we were able to pull reports from ride-share apps and look at expense claims to calculate car travel. Trawling through Xero was time intensive, but we’ve set up tags so it’s much easier next time.

Step two is calculation

Once we had all the data plugged into the calculator, we submitted it to ekos. In just a few days they calculated our total emissions, and provided the costs of Carbon Zero and Climate Positive certification. Climate positive costs 20% more - which is in line with the additional amount you’re offsetting.

Step three is offsetting

We chose to offset 120% of our carbon emissions to become Climate Positive certified. Our offsetting involves planting native trees here in Aotearoa, but more on that soon.

Step four is reduction (the most important bit!)

Now that we have a handle on our baseline emissions, and can identify our highest emission areas, we can figure out ways to reduce and set some targets. For Ākina, our highest carbon emissions by a long shot come from flights, so we’ll be looking at ways to reduce the amount of staff air travel in 2020.

Why did we use Ekos? 

There are a number of options out there to measure and offset carbon emissions. If you just want to get started with measuring, there’s lots of free tools, like the Ministry for the Environment Interactive Workbook, and the Sustainable Business Network Carbon Emissions Calculator. If you want to measure, get the measurement externally verified and then offset your emissions. In New Zealand some organisations that can help with that are ekos and Toitū (formerly known as Enviro-Mark).

We chose ekos because they’re a non-for profit enterprise that offset emissions through growth of new indigenous forests and the protection of existing indegenous forests from logging. They deliver sustainable development outcomes in rural communities in Aotearoa-New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. They work to create self-sustaining forest carbon projects and programmes. Many of the projects start with developing a financial model that drives regenerative capability and self-sustainability. They are all locally owned, developed collaboratively and as much as possible, locally delivered. You can check out their projects here. 

Also, their services came at a reasonable cost, which is still an important consideration for a non-profit like Ākina. It cost $850 for our measurement – costs are tiered based on number of full time employees – and approximately $30 per carbon credit to offset, where one tonne of CO2 = one carbon credit. Our total emissions were 69.79 tonnes, of which flights were 88%. 
 

ekos even sent us a certificate to make it all official.

Why your organisation should become climate positive (or carbon zero) certified too!

We think that all businesses, big and small, have a duty to do what they can to reduce their negative impact on the environment. 

We hope that other businesses and consumers alike will feel inspired to make actionable changes to reduce their carbon footprint. Apart from (most importantly) looking after Papatūānuku, taking control of your carbon emissions can also reduce your operating costs. 

In an age where consumers are showing more interest than ever in impact and are more concerned about climate change, being climate positive can set you apart from your competition, as well as create opportunities to connect you with other like-minded businesses.

What next?

Being climate positive is an important step for Ākina, but it’s only part of a journey. Now that we’re measuring our emissions we’ll be able to set targets for reduction, as well as continue offsetting. Comparing year by year, we’ll be able to see how we’re tracking and come up with new ways to keep our emissions as low as possible.

If you’d like to have a kōrero about the Ākina journey to becoming climate positive, or to get started on yours, you can email Ākina Operations Projects Manager Penny Down on penny.down@ākina.org.nz.