To protect our shared planet and advance environmental and social justice, everyone must do their part—from households and communities to elected officials and institutions to charitable organisations and businesses. At Rocket Charities, we’re doing our part via our dual mission: To design and deliver best-in-class charity merchandise while minimising our impact on the planet. We continually strive to be earth-friendly and restore the world around us, in all that we do.
Which is why we’re delighted and honoured to announce our recent Climate Positive accreditation from Earthly, a global movement led by experts and businesses, in partnership with nature. To achieve this meaningful certification as a true climate leader, a business must calculate its current carbon impact, identify solutions to reduce these emissions, and, ultimately, remove at least more than 10% of this footprint (110% in total). As Earthly puts it, being carbon neutral is no longer enough. In fact, the United Nations just warned that it’s “now or never” to limit our global warming and avert further disaster.
Achieving the Climate Positive accreditation is not an easy nor overnight feat, but it’s one positive step a business can take to start to do their part. In that spirit, we’d like to share a little more about our Climate Positive journey, so that other forward-thinking businesses may join us in this movement.
Why We’re Taking the Steps to Reduce our Business Footprint
At Rocket Charities, sustainability has long been a key driver of our daily activities, from offering eco-friendly merchandise options to fighting modern slavery in the charity supply chain. Protecting our planet is also the key focus among many of the charities we support and partner with. In other words, creating a more just and sustainable planet is in our ethos. Reducing our business footprint via the Climate Positive certification was a logical, attainable, and impactful way to practice our values.
As a business, we feel strongly that we have a role to play in creating more sustainable approaches to how we provide high-quality goods and services. We also feel it’s important to be an educated and positive partner, so that we can encourage and help others to do their part, too. For example, we often share insights and resources on topics like ethical fundraising and sourcing.
We know the Climate Positive accreditation is just a first step. We recognise that becoming a true climate leader in business requires continual effort and evolution. However, we’re proud to take this initial, action-oriented step to reduce our own carbon footprint on the planet by becoming an Earthly Climate Positive business. By offsetting Rocket Charities’ carbon footprint by 110%, we’ll release fewer carbon emissions into the atmosphere. This means we’ll help, at the least, to slow down climate change by preserving our environment and making better use of the earth’s limited and precious resources.
How We’re Becoming a Climate Positive Business
To receive the Climate Positive certification, we first had to calculate our current carbon footprint across three core areas:
- Direct emissions from sources that are owned or controlled by our company (e.g., workspace emissions, heating)
- Indirect emissions from purchased sources of energy that our company does not control (e.g., electricity)
- All other indirect emissions (e.g., procurement or freight)
We found that our total (t) CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent, or the universal unit of measurement to indicate the global warming potential of Greenhouse Gases) to be: 63.33 t CO2e. This breaks down to 2.26 t CO2e per employee or 0.05 t CO2e per square metre in our building.
But that’s just numbers and calculations. We also worked with Earthly to identify several reduction initiatives that we can take to further reduce this impact, across the three core areas. Not only are we taking steps to reduce our current footprint, we’re also offsetting 110% of our emissions by investing in nature-based projects. These projects are focused on removing carbon, restoring nature, and reversing climate change. Here’s more about the projects we’re excited to support:
- Brazil Nut Concessions in Madre de Dios: This project focuses on rainforest conservation in Peru to reduce deforestation in over 300,000 hectares of the Peruvian Amazon through a sustainable market for forest Brazil nuts. The goal is to stop deforestation and support the livelihood of 400 families.
- Mangrove Planting in Madagascar: This project run by Eden Reforestation Projects focuses on reforestation and poverty in the mangroves, which aid tremendously in carbon sequestration; mangroves also provide critical storm surge protection and vital habitats for many species. To date, the Madagascar project has planted over 300 million trees and created over 3 million workdays.
- Kasigau Dryland Protection: The Kasigau Corridor project protects an expanse of over 200,000 hectares of dryland Acacia-Commiphora forest home to over 2,000 elephants. The project has led to 13,936,339 t CO2e avoided to date and has created a market-driven solution to wildlife conservation through a community-led, community-based, sustainable model.
Our Commitment to the Planet
We’d like to close by sharing a bit more about our commitment to the planet:
Rocket Charities commits to work tirelessly and continually toward becoming a more sustainable business and partner. We recognise that the Climate Positive certification is only a first step. That’s why we have developed a sustainability roadmap that highlights the direction we need to take to become more sustainable. Initially, this means making more eco-friendly products available and accessible to our customers to give them a greater choice of products with more information on how their selection impacts the planet.
We also plan to publish a series of internal policies and documentation to make our customers aware of where we stand regarding our ethics, environmental impact, and corporate social responsibility. Additionally, we are currently drafting a responsibility report that outlines our plans and goals in detail, including our progress to reaching our desired outcomes. Once we have this clear plan in place, we will then publish the eco-credentials of each of our products on our website, which will lead into our planned offsetting scheme.
This plan will take continual evolution and we are up to the challenge. So, please join us in our effort to fight climate change and bring sustainability to the forefront of our business.
As we follow through on these commitments, we’ll use this space to share updates and impact and encourage our audience to do the same. What is your climate commitment?
We’d love to share even more. Please reach out any time to learn more about our Climate Positive journey or to share your own efforts to keep Earth inhabitable. We’re all on this planet and in this together.