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Steenbergs direct carbon emissions and offsets

Every year at Steenbergs, we sit down and try and calculate our carbon footprint and then offset for the greenhouse gasses that make up our carbon footprint.  It's a guesstimate because it does not include all aspects of the Steenbergs business, but we cover a much wider proportion of Steenbergs' impact on the planet than most other people get round to doing.

Steenbergs does not have any scope 1 or scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions, because we do not generate any of our own electricity nor do we get our electricity from a carbon generating source, plus as our products are not cooked we do not use gas or any other fossil fuel.  So all our greenhouse gas emissions are scope 3 indirect greenhouse gas emissions primarily from transport, travel and paper.

Firstly, let me explain the things that we include and those that we exclude: 

·          Carbon costs that are included: transport of raw materials and packaging from most recent supplier to Ripon; transport of Steenbergs goods from our Ripon factory to customers; transport of Steenbergs staff on business; and carbon cost of paper used in marketing and office functions;

 

·          Carbon costs that are excluded: energy (as it is 100% from renewable sources via Good Energy, but see my note i below); staff travel to and from work; embedded carbon within Steenbergs raw materials and packaging (this is something we are still trying to collect all the data on and hope to complete during 2010).


Secondly, we use the Climatecare model to calculate the CO2 emissions from the transport, energy use and paper costs.  Climatecare is one of the leaders in carbon offsets, and was acquired by J. P. Morgan Chase in 2008 (which may or may not be a good thing, but certainly is evidence of their doing something correct).  They design their projects to CDM, Gold Standard (GS VER), Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) and VER+, but this sector is unregulated and we are not experts enough to be able to work out the best carbon offsetting business, so we would welcome the Government to set up standards for the industry.  There is a great Frequently Asked Questions section on their web site that gives you more gen on the subject of carbon offsetting.

 

For the year ended 31 December 2009, Steenbergs direct carbon emissions was 3.75 tonnes CO2, which is 37.5% of the minimum off-settable amount by Climatecare.  Therefore, we have paid £75 + VAT which should more than cover any errors we have made in our calculations.

 

So at Steenbergs, we are treading lightly on the planet, but we still are aiming to bring this down further through greater environmental efficiency, better packaging and sourcing etc.  Offsetting is not the answer but a way of mitigating the impact of a business or person on the global environment; it’s a bit like an insurance policy that covers those bits of risk that you cannot protect against any other way.  So the key is to work to get the costs down, little by little until you have got your lifestyle as light on the planet as possible.  We managed to get this down by -68.5% from 2006 to 2008 and in 2009 we reduced our carbon emissions again (-28.2%); they would actually have halved but defra has changed its figures for emissions so the impact is less great but not strictly like-for-like.

 

To show that we have made progress and the breakdown of CO2 emissions at Steenbergs, please look at the tables and diagram below.

 

Table detailing carbon emissions for Steenbergs for 2006 - 2009

 

Tonnes CO2

2006

2007

2008

2009

 

 

 

 

 

Air travel

0.21

1.20

0.28

0.00

Cars

0.00

0.00

0.42

0.09

Public transport

0.08

0.08

0.04

0.10

Road freight

3.10

3.25

 1.81

2.89

Sea freight

9.52

1.82

 1.14

0.19

Air freight

8.58

0.00

 1.13

0.00

Publications

2.84

2.23

 2.83

2.23

Total

24.33

8.58

 7.66

5.50

 

 

 

 

 

Note i: if you did include office and factory energy, we used 2572kWh which equates to 1.36 tonnes CO2 and would add another £20.17 in offset costs.  So while we exclude this from our calculations, it is actually covered by the minimum carbon cost per reporting period that we have bought carbon offsets for.
Note ii: for a wider discussion about Steenbergs business and personal carbon costs, see blog from February 2010 at http://www.steenbergs.co.uk/blog/2010/02/carbon-offsets-and-the-steenberg-footprints/.



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