Sloane Lighting balanced their carbon footprint

In April 2021, Earthly helped Stoane Lighting, a designer and manufacturer of lighting equipment based in Scotland, to completely balance the carbon impact of their business operations.

We started by calculating the company’s total business emissions for the previous year. We included emissions from all three scopes, as defined by the greenhouse gas protocol and followed the guidance of ISO 14064: the international standard for greenhouse gas reporting. Stoane Lighting then chose to balance this carbon footprint by investing in a bundle of our nature-based projects: Mangroves in Madagascar; Brazil Nut Concessions in Madre de Dios and the Mai Ndombe REDD+ project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

A climate positive business certification is just one part of Stoane lighting’s pledge to Net Zero 2030, a B-Corp initiative – check out some of their other initiatives

here

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Our team has developed a carbon accounting tool that will help you to understand the greenhouse gas emissions associated with your business.

First you will need to collect data relating to everything you do as a company. This will include some basic info such as number of employees and working hours; details of energy use from electricity and heating for your office and any home workers; data on transport from business travel, freighting goods and commuting; plus all other indirect sources of emissions from procurement, food, water and waste.

When you have gathered as much of the required information as you can, you will need to fill out our input spreadsheet. This is organised into categories using the scopes of emissions outlined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Scope 1 is direct emissions; scope 2 is indirect emissions from purchased electricity and scope 3 is all other indirect emissions. Although it may look daunting, we will work with you to find assumptions and use national averages for any areas where you do not know the answer. Our tool is constantly evolving to make the process as streamlined as possible for our clients.

Once you have completed our spreadsheet we can take it from there. Our carbon accounting tool will calculate the emissions associated with your business following the guidance of ISO 14064: the international standard for greenhouse gas reporting. Our methodology is regularly updated to make sure we stay up to date with the latest science. In order to stay consistent with other forms of environmental reporting Earthly makes use of the official UK emissions factors published by DEFRA each year. Our calculations are verified by the Stockholm Environment Institute and by Carbon Action.

As soon as we have finished your calculations we will provide you with a Business Emissions report for your company. This will give the total carbon impact in tonnes CO₂e (carbon dioxide equivalent units) for the reporting year, as well as breakdowns of your emissions into simple categories, making it easy to identify carbon hotspots. We will also outline any assumptions made to ensure full transparency and suggest some simple reduction initiatives to help you continue on your climate journey. The next step is to choose one of our amazing projects to invest in, certifying your business as Climate Positive.