Published: 02 Sep 2021
Last updated: 26 May 2023
At Capital on Tap, reducing our carbon footprint is one of our most critical and ambitious goals – it’s important to our team and our customers.
We’ve built a digital payment solution with a relatively low carbon footprint, but we’re aware that our environmental impact will increase as we continue to expand as a business.
Our carbon footprint
Over the last year, we've seen some reductions in carbon emissions given reduced employee commuting, less business travel and lower office energy usage. Nevertheless, our marketing efforts, sending of cards in the post and important customer communications meant we contributed to global greenhouse gas emissions.
We know as a company we must accelerate our efforts on climate action. With the support of Carbon Footprint Limited, we've offset 3.8k tonnes of CO2e. This is an estimate of the impact of our businesses contribution to emissions and includes offsetting the full impact of printing and shipping cards and marketing materials.
Carbon offsetting
Carbon offsetting compensates for the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
For every tonne of carbon from our own operations that we emitted last year, we have invested in a project overseas which is reducing carbon emissions by the same amount.
Our carbon offsetting projects
1. Buying clean energy cookstoves for people in Malawi
The project aims to disseminate over 8,000 improved energy-efficient cookstoves to homes in Malawi. The stoves are more efficient and use less wood for household cooking and heating than traditional stoves.
The improved technology and practices are intended to replace less efficient technologies and practices and result in biomass conservation and a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere from the burning of solid biomass.
2. Protecting and reducing deforestation in the Amazon
The project is working to provide legal land-use permits that will result in official land titles for those villages that actively participate in forest protection.
Through funds raised, the project can continue to improve food security through agroforestry techniques, while introducing sustainable livelihood alternatives to local communities.
3. Reforestation in Kenya
This project aims to plant hundreds of thousands of indigenous trees on the worst degraded areas of the Kikuyu Escarpment Forest.
The forest has been subject to charcoal burning, logging for timber and fuel wood, ring-debarking of medicinal trees and overgrazing, which has resulted in the depletion of forest vegetation cover, drying of springs/rivers/streams and soil erosion.
Carbon offsetting standards
All the projects we have invested in meet the stringent requirements of the Quality Assurance Standard (QAS) for Carbon Offsetting.
The QAS aim to ensure that the carbon emissions calculation methodology being used is independently verified, that carbon offset projects meet the highest standards available in the offsetting industry and that carbon retirement is done in an open and timely manner.
An independent specialist auditing organisation, Ricardo-AEA Ltd, is being used to verify the accuracy of carbon offset calculations.
What’s next?
We’re proud of our investment in carbon offsetting and the projects that we are supporting. We plan to continue to think of new ways we can continue to grow our business in an environmentally conscious way.
