Ask Us Anything Webinar Recap

Hi y’all, and welcome to today’s session. This one’s a little different for us if you’ve tuned into any of our other webinars. So today we have an Ask Us Anything. We actually have been taking questions for the last few weeks, so we’ve got a lot of questions already identified that I’ll be answering today. But I would like to point you to the question’s feature. So you can ask questions throughout the session. I will do my best to answer them as we go, or at the end, depending on the nature of the question and what topic it relates to. So just to start a quick introduction, I’m Nicole Sullivan. I’m the Director of climate services for CarbonBetter. So at CarbonBetter, we help folks with every step of their sustainability journey from quantifying and disclosing their environmental impacts through storytelling and sustainability reporting, all the way to developing sustainability and decarbonization strategies, and ultimately reducing emissions through direct decarbonization as well as participation in the voluntary carbon market. I’m an environmental engineer by trade, and I’ve been in the consulting space for a long while, so I feel equipped to answer a lot of your hard questions. But if there’s anything that comes up that I need to dig into later and get back to you, I will. All right so to start, we had a few different questions come in about sustainability strategy. So the first one we had is as a small business just beginning our sustainability journey, which cost effective strategies should we consider for integrating sustainability into our operations to make an immediate positive impact? So my answer is gonna be kind of an, it depends situation, but I think for starters, it’s awesome that you’re wanting to get started and you’re wanting to take action. One of the first things you can do is really identify the resources you have on your team that know about sustainability or that are passionate about it. Who are your stakeholders within your business that care about driving initiatives forward? And then, while I know we have this like you know, burning desire to just like take action and throw money at solutions, it can be really important to actually set a strategy and have a plan. So in this space, there’s this concept of what gets measured gets managed. And so it’s really important to really first take a look at where you’re at today, to see what actions to prioritize. So if you haven’t done so already, you can quantify your carbon footprint, look at your water impacts and waste impacts, and figure out where in your business you could drive the most change. And it’s gonna look a little different depending on the nature of your operation. So low hanging fruit actions, if you are like a manufacturer of a product, are going to look a lot different than you know, the low hanging fruit you might incur if you are an office building. So I’m gonna use the office example whereby you know, you have office space that you maybe lease out and so you quantify your carbon impacts and you realize that electricity consumption is really, is really the biggest source of your emission. So if you’re leasing the space, maybe you don’t have the option for onsite solar or that’s out of your budget, but there’s opportunities to look into, you know, do you have access to potentially procuring a green energy plan, or can you purchase renewable energy certificates or knowing what your carbon footprint is, can you purchase carbon offsets to start taking action while you plan for projects that might be bigger or longer term, or require more investment, like, you know, investing in energy efficiency projects or lighting projects. One thing I forgot to, I guess call to your attention in kicking this off, some of the slides today have QR codes with the option to dig deeper. So we’ve tried to really link up relevant content that we have for specific questions in case you want to dig further on a given topic. So I just wanted to call that to your attention as well. The next question we have is how can we use the results of a materiality assessment to inform our sustainability strategy and drive meaningful change within our organization? And I’m actually gonna take a step back on this one and really talk about, well what is a materiality assessment? And this is something that we see is you know, it’s a tool used very commonly in the ESG space or the environmental social and governance space. I’m gonna really look at it in the lens of just the E or the environmental portion. And before you even do an, a materiality assessment, you should really look at how your business interacts with the environment, which is the concept of your environmental aspects. And at each place that your business interacts with the environment, there’s the potential for environmental impacts. So let’s look for example, if you are in the agricultural space and you are using water to water your plants, that water withdrawal is an environmental aspect. And potential impacts could be depletion of water supply as well as degradation of water quality. So once you’ve gone through your business holistically and you’ve looked at your environmental aspects, so those points where you’re interacting with the environment as well as those potential environmental impacts to dig into materiality, you’re going to look at how important are each of those topics to your stakeholders. And stakeholders can mean any number of things depending on your business. Your stakeholders might be, they might be your investors, they might be your customers, they might be your employees. So you’ve gotta look at who this stakeholder ecosystem is that matters to you in the case of this materiality assessment. And then look at which of these topics are most important to them. You’re also going to look at which of these topics pose like a risk to the success of your business. So while materialities assessments can be somewhat subjective, you’re going to basically define a scoring system and really figure out which of these environmental impacts topics are most important to your stakeholders or are most threatening to the success of your business. And then from there, once you’ve done that assessment, you can actually drill in and really focus on mitigating those risks. So, you know, if water say is of high importance, maybe you’re in the alcoholic beverage space, which you know, alcoholic beverages consume a lot of water in the production. And so maybe water consumption is a really highly material topic. You can really start to, if you haven’t done anything today, you might wanna do a water footprint and then you might wanna set goals around reducing your water consumption and really taking action there. So materiality assessments are really a lever that can help you, help you know where to focus your efforts as well as focus your resources, right? Because quantifying your impacts and taking action on your impacts and setting goals and, you know, implementing projects, all of that takes time and resources. So you wanna focus, focus your resources in a way that best protects the environment while also best protecting your business, both from a reputational and a success perspective. And then also that you know, that benefits your stakeholders. Let’s see. So the next question, and I was actually really excited that we got this one because this is a topic that I’m really passionate about, is how can we develop a holistic sustainability strategy that not only focuses on decarbonization, but also addresses other critical aspects like water and waste management. And right now we see, we see a lot of companies and brands setting net zero targets and really focusing energy on decarbonization, which is super important. I am a huge advocate for that. But when we look at net zero, we’re really looking at carbon kind of in a vacuum, right? So the net zero equation looks at your carbon emissions and your efforts to reduce those emissions and offset those emissions with the goal of netting out to zero. But it leaves out a bunch of things. So other air pollutants besides greenhouse gases and carbon are excluded from net zero. So things like hazardous air pollutants or criteria air pollutants, those are excluded from a net zero approach. You’re also not looking at water and when we look at water, we’re looking at both quantity and quality, right? So we should be considering our water withdrawals and our discharges and our consumption as well as any degradation. So our, is our business having a negative impact on water quality? And then from a waste perspective, there’s a lot of considerations. You wanna look at your waste footprint in terms of solid waste streams, hazardous waste streams, potentially electronic waste streams. And waste has a lot of considerations in terms of, you know, where is your waste going? So this poses a lot of complexities if you’re in the consumer packaged good space and you’re selecting packaging you know, we’re seeing like compostable packaging for example, trending and you know, most individuals don’t have access to industrial grade composting facilities, such that like, is your compostable packaging actually ultimately even being composted? So I think in terms of setting a holistic strategy, it is really important to not look at carbon in a vacuum, but how you look at the different components of environmental impacts you know, will somewhat depend on the nature of your operations, the nature of your waste streams. You know whether water is a really heavy hitter for you. And I think something that is really important to keep in mind too is that water and climate are so closely interrelated, right? So access to water, water scarcity challenges you know, they really go hand in hand. So it’s important to consider them, and you can even consider them in your decarbonization strategies. So we’ll touch more on the voluntary carbon market leader in the session, but you can actually look for carbon projects when offsetting your carbon emissions that also have co-benefits with specific focus areas. So if water is a big concern for your business or a high impact area, you might look for carbon credits that have water co-benefits associated with them as well. So the next, the next one I’m gonna cover is how can we build a more sustainable supply chain by identifying, collaborating with and ensuring our suppliers and partners are aware of and share our commitment to sustainability. In this one, we actually, I’ll talk about Scope three emissions some later as well because we see this as a challenge area for folks. We had multiple questions as it relates to supplier engagement as well as quantifying the impacts from suppliers and in terms of you know, building a more sustainable supply chain and collaborating with suppliers. You know, one of the first things is if you as a business have developed your own environmental policy and you’re you know, company-wide working towards certain goals, part of ensuring your suppliers can help you meet those is communicating those goals and those policies out with your suppliers. So that can take a number of forms, whether it’s you know, via just calls or during the contracting process or putting out informative collateral. You could even do webinars with your suppliers as well as if you are, if you’re quantifying your impacts and disclosing those through sustainability reporting, ensuring that all of your suppliers have a copy of that report in terms of you know, collaborating with them. If you’re quantifying Scope three emissions, which you know, are basically everything besides your direct emissions from energy consumption as well as your, like emissions from consuming electricity. So supply chain falls under Scope three. If you’re quantifying those emissions, you’re likely relying on your suppliers for data. And some of those data points can come through you know, your accounting department and procurement where you’re looking at, well, how much of this thing are we purchasing from our suppliers? But your suppliers might be taking action or have done the math associated with their products or the things you’re procuring already. So having that open dialogue with your suppliers can not just make them aware of what you are doing, but also allow you to be more aware of the efforts that they’re taking as well as to then explore any synergies or any overlap, right? You might find that you have goals in common that you can work towards. And we’ve even seen brands work with their suppliers to implement projects. So if you’re working with a supplier that maybe has you know is one of your heaviest emitting sources because you’re using them as like a co-manufacturer, there might be opportunities where you could help them to implement projects or reduction strategies. And then the last thing I wanna maybe call out here is that, you know, you’re quantifying the impacts of your suppliers if you’re doing your Scope three emissions and you’re, if you’re doing a robust sustainability report, you might also be talking about the stories and the trade offs of why you chose certain suppliers. So you know, if you’re open to making your suppliers, you know, identifying them publicly, which you might not be due to, you know, the complexity of your supply chain or you know, privacy concerns, but it you know, if you’re open to those relationships being public, there might be opportunity to highlight some of the wins that you’ve had with your suppliers in your sustainability reporting, which can then motivate your other suppliers to do more and to do better. Right, so the next kind of bucket of questions that we got in are surrounding carbon accounting and reporting. So the first one we’re gonna tackle is our business is growing rapidly, how can we measure progress towards improving our impacts when our overall footprint is expanding as our business grows? So this is one that like, is always really interesting to me, right? People come to us, they do their carbon, we do their carbon accounting and you know, they have their footprint, but they’re also scaling up operations, right? Maybe they are expanding their distribution footprint or they are adding new suppliers, or they went from operating five days a week to 24/7 because, you know, growth has been super rapid, which is awesome, right? If you’re building a business that is your goal, to scale that business and to grow and generate more revenue. But sometimes in tandem with that comes an increased carbon footprint, right? Because as you add more suppliers, as you start operating 24/7, all of a sudden your emissions profile is actually going up because you’re consuming more energy or you are distributing globally versus when you started, you were only distributing in the United States. And with that, sorry, I’m seeing a question come through in the chat, I got distracted, apologies. So as your business scales, as your footprint scales, what can you do about it, right? You’ve set targets where you’re supposed to be decreasing your emissions and yet you’re watching your emissions go up. And there’s a really important concept that I wanna touch on, and that’s emissions intensity. So as you scale up, even with an increasing emission footprint, it’s really important to work towards decreasing your emissions intensity. So if you’re manufacturing a product that emissions intensity often looks like your emissions per unit of product, typically either in grams or kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent. So it’s really important to know your overall you know, company-wide carbon footprint, but normalizing that carbon footprint into per product terms. Or if you are, if you are maybe like an office, an office only business, your emissions intensity might be normalized to terms of, you know, emissions per square foot or emissions per, you know, full-time, full-time employee equivalent. But basically relating those emissions into a given unit allows you to track if you’re becoming more operationally efficient and carbon efficient as you grow. So I have a case study here, which this is Beatbox beverages. So as you see, they actually have zero Scope one emissions, a really small scope to a foot, scope to emissions footprint, and then the bulk of their emissions come from Scope three because they use a co-packer to manufacture their product. And as you can see, they consider a number of emission sources in their overall carbon footprint, which totaled out to 6,806 metric tons of carbon dioxide. They then were able to relate that back with a greenhouse gas intensity of 445 grams of carbon dioxide per carton of party punch. An additional reason to normalize your emissions into an emissions intensity value is it’s obviously to be able to track progress and to really see if you’re becoming more efficient, but it’s also a really helpful metric for your end consumers or your end users or even your employees to be able to think about things in terms that make more sense, right? Like, you know, I’ve been in this space for a long time and a metric ton still sometimes feels like a nebulous unit of measure, right? It’s a metric ton of carbon dioxide, which you can’t see. But when you think about it in relation to this thing that you’re able to hold in your hand, it makes it more tangible for your consumers. So it’s important to consider your growth plans when you’re setting your carbon or decarbonization goals, right? You’ve got a factor in the fact that you have this plan to grow, you have this plan to expand your operations. So how do you work decarbonization into that growth so that you are, you know, perhaps you’re procuring more energy efficient equipment or doing fuel switching or, you know, implementing renewables projects. There’s any number of ways to start working decarbonization into your growth plan. And you also might factor that into your you know, carbon offsetting budget. But emissions intensity is a really important metric to be tracking because even as your footprint grows, the goal should for sure be that your emissions intensity strengths and your overall emissions per unit of product or emissions per square foot or whatever that normalizing factor is that that would decrease over time as you try to make progress to your goals. The next one I have is how can we report in a way that’s transparent and positive while avoiding greenwashing? Our leadership team is worried about disclosing impacts. So this is something that’s actually been a hot topic in our Slack channel lately, because I obviously, greenwashing is a term that’s been around for a while, but there’s some emerging buzzwords in the space such as green hushing, where you’re taking action, but you’re not talking about it because you wanna avoid scrutiny. There’s green rinsing, there’s green lighting, there’s really, there’s a number of new greenwashing related buzzwords that, you know, people are also now worried about avoiding and wanna make sure they’re not misstepping. And so in terms of how to report in a way that’s transparent, you know, I think something that’s paramount is really telling people what you did and also how you did it, right? So we are seeing a lot of brands disclose their carbon footprint and that is great, but there are a lot of ways to calculate a carbon footprint and there’s a lot of different boundaries you can set when carbon footprinting. So for example if someone puts out a number that’s say a 1000 metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent is, you know, that’s their carbon footprint, is that their Scope one carbon footprint? Is it Scope one, two, and three emissions? You know, what emission sources are represented in that? And then there’s also the question of how did they get the number? So something that I am really a firm believer in and something that we do in our sustainability reporting efforts on behalf of clients is we actually, you know, we disclose the assumptions that were made in the math, we disclose the methodology that was used. There’s a whole lot of standards and protocols out there and different emission factors and different ways to quantify emissions. And with that you know, there’s a lot of right ways to do things. There’s some wrong ways to obviously, but it’s really important to tell people what you did and how you did it. We’re seeing there, you know, there’s data out there that many consumers don’t trust brand sustainability claims or don’t feel they have enough information to verify those claims. So if you’re gonna put data out there, do so, you know, don’t make vague claims like there’s a lot of you know, buzzwords you can use that don’t mean a whole lot. So if you’re gonna tell your story and tell your impacts, do so in a way that really is trustworthy and transparent, that highlights the what you did and the why you did it. And if you do so in that way, it makes it a lot easier for all of your stakeholders across the board, whether that’s investors or employees or customers to trust that data because you’re giving it to them, you’re showing them how the sausage is made and ultimately that really resonates with folks and it lowers the risk of any accusation because you’re doing things in a way that shows people that like you stand by what you did and you’re willing to open the door into how you did it. And I just actually wanna touch on this slide really quickly as well. So I mentioned there’s a number of standards and protocols out there, and that can feel overwhelming in itself to navigate. So you know, there’s the greenhouse gas protocol, which can guide you on how to quantify your carbon footprint. You know, we’re seeing more and more businesses submit reports through you know, like frameworks and standards such as CDP, which was formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project. And it you know, following a protocol or a standard such as the, you know, sustainable accounting standards boards or SASB, following these protocols or using them as guidance, it’s another way, you know, that can help, help, you know, give trust signals because you’ve shown your methodology, you’ve disclosed that you’re reporting in accordance with a given standards, you might disclose actually to that body and then be compared to other companies in your same industry or across industries. So I do know that it can be scary to take that first step and make your impacts public, but it also, if you’re in a space where few of your competitors are doing so, it creates the opportunity for you to be a front runner and be a leader in the space and actually drive change and motivate your competitors to do better as well. And then something that’s also a consideration is your customers want to see your impacts, right? Like we’re seeing a lot of data that, you know, customers even will choose what they buy based on the environmental impacts of a given product. So putting that out there can really be beneficial for your brand as well as have a return on investment. All right, the next one, which I kind of teed up earlier is, how do we account for Scope three emissions in our carbon footprint calculations and what actions can we take to reduce them? So Scope three is going to look very different depending on the nature of your business. Say you’re a consulting firm and you have, you know, an office space, but you know, you’re not really procuring much, but maybe you do a lot of corporate travel. Those corporate travel emissions would fall under your Scope three. If you are in say like the food and beverage space and you’re sourcing ingredients and or you’re making a product and you’re distributing that product you know, packaging falls under Scope three there you know, Scope three is like this nebulous catch-all for a lot of people and it can feel really overwhelming because, you know, you might feel like, oh, okay, well I am, you know I procure one bottle of this thing every year. Do I need to chase down those molecules of carbon dioxide equivalent? And, you know, I think in terms of getting started with Scope three, it can be really important to just sit down and look at what are all the potential sources that would fall under Scope three, and then what are your resources? Like, are you doing this in-house? Are you using a third party? You know, what are your relationships with your suppliers like? Have you done any supplier questionnaires where you already have some data and insight on a given supplier? But in the case of you know, getting started for Scope three, you know, an important way to kind of help get started could be just to first look at what are the biggest sources of those emissions? Say you’re making a product and one input makes up 90% of your procurement, focusing on that thing first can be kind of the lowest hanging fruit of getting started. The data gathering can be trickier for Scope three, right, because you’re not just relying on data that you already own yourself. You likely have to engage with your suppliers or start doing some you know, research. If we’re talking about like agricultural inputs, you might be looking for lifecycle assessment factors for a given ingredient. So Scope three can be intensive, and so it’s one of those things like you kind of just have to get started and you have to do it. Well, I guess technically you don’t have to, let me, let me backtrack you, you know, there are some emerging regulations that might require you to do so. In the voluntary space there’s no technical like obligation, but at the same time depending on your operations, Scope three really could be the biggest source of emissions in your overall carbon footprint. So I do feel it’s really important for brands to step up and start calculating their Scope three emissions. And it’s something that you can build on over time. You don’t have to go from zero to a 1000 and catch every single source, but maybe the first pass you get as many as you can and then you’re like, okay this one Scope three emission source is really tricky and I’m gonna have to like figure out the data for it or talk to this person and maybe you know, that one takes a little longer. I think, you know, in this race to get things done, we, you’ve still gotta be pragmatic and you know, a lot of times if you’re a smaller business, sustainability might be a hat that you wear on top of, you know, your everyday role. And so it can, you know, Scope three can feel overwhelming, but at the same time, if you really take a step back and just break it down in terms of what are the sources you know, which sources are most you know, most heavily like, impactful to your business and really start there and approach it pragmatically you know, I think it’s very much, it’s manageable. In terms of actions to reduce them, you know, this is another place where you might have influence but you have less control. So you can look at you know, if you know maybe a supplier that has you know, really high emissions and that you know, maybe you have to work with them because of X, Y, Z reasons. Like, is there the opportunity to work in decarbonization goals to your contract or, you know, work contractually obligate them to provide data. And again that can take time to set up depending on your contracting cycle. So the strategy really does look different depending on the nature of your Scope three emissions. But I think, you know, the fact that we’re seeing these questions people are interested in tackling it and rising to the challenge, which is encouraging to see. The last kind of bucket of questions that we got in advance of the session were around goal setting. And the first one is how do we set realistic and impactful sustainability goals for our organization? And with this one, I cannot you know, stress enough the importance of knowing where you’re at before you set goals. You know, goal setting is super important to making progress and decarbonizing or reducing your water impacts or waste impacts. But you know we’re seeing people race to set net zero targets or carbon reduction targets before they actually know what their carbon footprint is. And knowing where you’re at today will help enable you to set goals that are achievable and things you can work for as well as to start planning for how you’re going to achieve them. So once you have a baseline, you can set goals and start measuring progress towards those goals. And it’s important even in this space where we’re seeing people set goals you know, for 2030 or 2040 and even beyond into 2050 you know, those targets are great, but what are those milestones you’re working towards in between, right? Like if you’re gonna go from you know, X carbon footprint today to, you know, net zero in 2040, what’s your pathway to get there? Because ultimately, you know, carbon credits are a tool and they’re a really important lever for offsetting emissions. But you know, direct decarbonization is important and it takes time and money and planning. So if you’ve set a 2040 target, you can’t wait till 2039 to start working towards that. So really it’s about being pragmatic, knowing where you’re at today, and then setting interim milestones that you can work towards as well as continually tracking your progress and looking back at, you know, where are we at today in comparison to last year and five years, five years ago. And also something to consider is that your goals may adjust, right? Technology is changing so you know, there, a technology might emerge to help you reach your goals that you hadn’t even accounted for when you set those goals. So I will say that sustainability is a really agile space in that, you know, you do have to adapt and adjust, but you don’t wanna set goals and make them public and then backtrack on them. And I hate to call out Crocs because like I actually love their footwear and wear them pretty regularly, but they set a 2030 net zero target and then just recently pushed that back to 2040 once they realized, you know, the work and what it would take and you know, good on them for owning it and putting it out there and like you know, stating it. But at the same time, like if you’re gonna go about this, you know, do so pragmatically in a way that you can avoid that misstep, right? You wanna deliver on your goals both for the planet as well as for your stakeholders. The next one is, our company has achieved carbon neutrality. What are the next steps to strive for like, for example, carbon negativity. So I think the first thing to consider is what are you carbon neutral for? Are you carbon neutral for Scope one, two, and three or are you just carbon neutral for Scope one and two? And if it’s the latter, I would encourage you to you know, first expand going carbon neutral for Scope three before considering going beyond carbon neutral. The next thing to consider is how did you go about carbon neutrality? Were you able to directly decarbonize or did you rely exclusively on carbon credits or some combination. And then you know, really look at you know, what were they high quality carbon credits, are there opportunities to do more direct decarbonization? And then once you’ve really optimized and like you’re doing, you know, doing carbon neutral in the best way that you can, carbon negativity or sometimes also referred to as climate positive is absolutely a great goal. And basically it means that you’re offsetting emissions, you know, you’re offsetting beyond zero, right? So your offsets are greater than your emissions. And it’s something you know, you, by investing in carbon credits to offset your emissions you’re investing in decarbonization activities globally. So definitely a great goal to strive for. And then also you know, again, I’m gonna go back to something I talked about earlier, is not to look at carbon in a vacuum, right? You know, are there opportunities to set or work towards water goals and waste goals? There’s a lot of ways you can positively impact the environment beyond reaching carbon neutral or even carbon negative. And then I, we’ve actually got one more bucket here, I apologize. I think I said the last one was the last one. So carbon credits. When choosing carbon credits to offset our emissions, how can we choose high quality carbon credits? So this is something that’s, it’s really important to me is that while a carbon credit represents one metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent, not all carbon credits are created equal. And if you are going to be using you know, carbon credits to offset your emissions, if you’re using that lever as a tool to reach your goals, it’s really important to invest in high quality carbon credits. And that can look like a bunch of different things. There are some emerging, you know, ratings bodies out there and people, you know, protocols around quality credits. But I’m gonna really dig into the core ones that are, you know, important to us. So is the project additional? And that’s something that means like, would the project have happened otherwise in the absence of this carbon credit or you know, in business as usual and if it would’ve happened business as usual, that project is not additional and not something you should invest in. You also want projects that are you know, real and credible and have been compared to a credible baseline. So to ensure that that project is taking real action, you first have to look at what was the baseline state before implementing the project. And then you’ve also gotta look at measurement and protocols. How was that carbon reduction or carbon sequestration measured? Was it done so accurately? And then something that is really paramount to me is, was it third party verified? Third party verification and credits from, you know, high quality registries or trustworthy registries that require third party verification is a really important consideration. You know, that verification ensures that the math associated with issuing that credit was accurate, that boots on the ground that that project exists. And you know, in the case of say like a reforestation project that those trees were planted in the ground and they are growing and they are sequestering that carbon. You also want to avoid double counting. So in the case of reputable registries, when you retire a carbon credit, that credit is taken out of circulation so that you know, at that retirement point you have officially offset your emissions with that credit and that credit can no longer be applied to anyone else’s emissions profile. It can no longer be used again in a you know, you don’t want to buy a carbon credit that’s double counting in emissions reductions or is part of multiple carbon credit programs. So it can feel really complex to navigate, but it’s definitely, you wanna ensure that you know, with your budget that you’re spending on carbon credits, you’re investing in high quality projects. And then something that we also really like to look at are our co-benefits of a carbon project. So obviously you wanna ensure that there’s you know, accuracy and verification and confidence in that carbon credit representing one metric ton of carbon dioxide. But also is that project doing anything else beneficial for the environment? Is it increasing or protecting biodiversity? Is it, is there an aquifer restoration component? Has it created jobs or health benefits in the community in which it was implemented? Co-benefits can be you know, a great value add when you’re, you know, procuring carbon credits. And then the last one I think that we have before I go over to audience questions is, we’ve done the math for our Scope one and two carbon footprint and we wanna offset that to achieve carbon neutral. Where and how do we buy carbon offsets? And for anyone in the audience that has you know, ever tried to procure carbon either for yourself as an individual or on behalf of your business, it can often feel harder to do than it seems like it should be, right? It’s not like online shopping for shoes where you have kind of limitless options. If you’re going, if you’re looking to procure carbon credits and say you have, you know, a few 100 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions that you’re offsetting, which is a pretty low footprint and something that you know, you wanna offset, but your options look a little different. So you might go online to marketplaces to procure that carbon, such as like the gold standard registry, which is one of the more reputable registries out there. They have a marketplace where you can buy carbon credits directly from projects issued by the registry. There’s also some marketplaces like cool effect, which have, you know, projects you can procure. Something you’ll find though, when you’re buying carbon in this way, you’re really limited in terms of the types of projects you can gain access to as well as, you know, pricing can be a little higher on a per ton basis, but say you’re getting into that, you know, 05,000 to 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, it, you know, you might at that point go through brokers or you know, do an RFP and send it out to several different brokers or developers and try to source carbon in that way. And you might find that that’s still, you know, you’re still getting a limited, a limited variety of projects perhaps because you know, to some parties in the space that might seem like still like a relatively small volume of carbon. So something that’s really important is you know, if you’re working to procure carbon you know, identifying your goals beyond offsetting the emissions, are there specific geographies you’re looking for where you want a project that’s close to home or you’re looking for specific co-benefits or maybe you’re looking for nature-based solutions. So we really like at CarbonBetter, we do bespoke carbon sourcing on behalf of our clients where we really tailor our project offerings to what they’re looking for. And then we also have a carbon credit portfolio that we can transact on regardless of your volume of carbon. So even if you only have a 100, you know, a 100 metric tons that you need to offset, we can do that in a way that gives you access to multiple projects. But it’s one of those things, I think working with a party that you trust to do due diligence and verify that projects are high quality and then really considering the criteria that’s most meaningful to you in sourcing carbon. But a lot of how you go about buying it or sourcing it depends on the volume of carbon that you’re shopping for as well as your budget, right? You might have you know, goals of like purchasing, you know, carbon credits from a blue carbon project because you’re really passionate about mangroves, but your budget might not indicate being able to completely offset all of your emissions with that, but you might be able to take a portfolio approach and blend some of those mangrove projects in. Let’s see. And then one thing too that I just wanna touch on, and I maybe should have done this at the beginning, but I’ve, you know, I’ve talked a lot about Scope three emissions so far today and we’ve also talked a good bit about offsets, but I just wanted to really kind of show the net zero equation here, the carbon equation where we’ve got you know, our emissions of Scope one, which is our direct emissions from operations Scope two, which would be indirect emissions from purchase energy such as electricity. And then Scope three, which is really all other emission sources from you know, supply chain as well as corporate travel. And then there’s multiple ways to reduce emissions. So we’ve touched on carbon credits a lot, which equal, you know one metric ton of carbon dioxide reduced or sequestered, but I really can’t stress enough the importance of direct reductions through, you know, operational changes. You know, taking direct action while also using carbon credits in tandem as a tool is a really important part of having a holistic decarbonization strategy. And then something we didn’t really touch on today, but I just did wanna call out as another kind of you know, tool is renewable energy certificates, which are really a lever for your Scope two emissions. All right, and so with that I have seen some questions flow in, so I’m gonna jump over to those. Let’s see, sorry, give me a moment, bear with me. Let’s see. The first question I’ve got here is for small and medium sized businesses. What are the best reporting systems to get started with? And I’m gonna take this answer a couple different directions ’cause I am not a 100% sure what was meant by reporting systems in this case, but I’m gonna start with the quantification perspective first. So your carbon accounting or your environmental impacts accounting and you know, I think there’s a lot of shiny softwares out there right now marketing themselves as an easy button for quantifying your impacts. But in terms of quantifying your emissions footprint as you get started, there’s a lot of data to gather, there’s a lot of business processes you might have to implement. So, you know, starting with a spreadsheet can be, you know, a really, like a really low lift way to start and you know, quantify from there. And then in terms of actually disclosing your emissions, you know, there’s a lot of ways to go about it and if you’re looking to disclose them via one of the standards like CDP or SASB, you’re probably gonna wanna first compare the protocols and methodologies and see do they have, like for example, the Sustainable Accounting Standards Board has industry specific methodologies. So if you’re an industry covered by that, maybe that one stands out to you or you know, maybe a lot of your peers are reporting through, you know, GRI and so you wanna pursue that. But I think you know, choosing to disclose to a given body like isn’t essential. And you also really just have the option to make your reporting public on your website and put your impacts out there in that way. So you know, there’s a lot of systems out there, but I would say it can be overly complicated and it shouldn’t be a hindrance to getting started. So you know, I think there’s a lot of challenges with some of the different software tools in terms of traceability and transparency, right? If you’re doing this math for the first time, you really want to document the process, you wanna document your assumptions and how you did that math and that’s something you don’t always get out of, out of like a SaaS solution. So I hope that answered your systems question, but if you wanna build on it, I’m happy to dig further on that. So the next question is, you know, I’m curious about bridging the gap between typical Scope one and Scope two, carbon focus and corporate sustainability and the more holistic LCA Scope three type thinking you’re talking about here. And then part of the challenge I see is communicating and reasoning on more complex data. How do you compare for example, emitted CO2 and consumed water and biodiversity impacts to make the best decisions? Alright, a multi-parter, so I’ll do my best. In terms of Scope one, two, and three you know, there’s, so there’s really like a life cycle focused approach to Scope three that doesn’t necessarily refer to doing an overall like life cycle assessment, but it’s more looking at individual ingredients and things like that or individual inputs. And again, so much of the complexity of how you approach Scope three is really going to lean on what type of industry you are in. The greenhouse gas protocol is a really valuable place to start in terms of digging into best practices for Scope three emissions. So for example, in the case of you’re making a product that has, you know, sugar as an ingredient and you’re sourcing the sugar from you know, let’s say you’re sourcing the sugar from somewhere in Europe, like is there data out there that you know, provides an emissions factor for the manufacturer of that sugar? And then you’re also looking at the transport of that sugar. So you’re not necessarily looking at you know, the full end of life of that, you’re really looking at your consumption of that input as well as your receipt of that input. But definitely I would say like the most robust kind of protocols out there around Scope three emissions really fall under the greenhouse gas protocol. So if you haven’t dug in there, highly, highly encouraged using that as a resource. And then, you know, reputability of emission factors is a really important consideration, right? For Scope one and Scope two, a lot of those emission factors you know, are published by you know, even new like EPA. So the Environmental Protection Agency has published, you know, a number of grid factors for use for electricity emissions, but there’s less out there for some of those like niche emission sources. So when you’re looking for emission factors, if you can find emission factors that have been you know, that are in literature and peer reviewed you know, those might be, might be the best choice. But again, it really depends on the nature of what you’re quantifying as well as what guidance is most appropriate. And it, you know, it can be tricky to navigate and I would say like, you know, having support resources, whether they’re doing the calculations or even third party verifying if you’re doing the math in-house, can be helpful in validating that you’re calculating emissions in terms of best practices. The next part of that question, I would believe was, I believe was around communication and the reasoning on more complex data and how do you compare carbon water and biodiversity impacts? And I think part of this actually traces back to materiality, right? Where everything in this space has trade-offs. So maybe you’re sourcing an ingredient from as close as possible as you can, but you’re in a really drought ridden region, or maybe you’ve chosen a specific packaging because it’s lightweight. So the carbon footprint is going to be less when you transport your product, but it’s less recyclable. So you really have to look at which of the issues pose highest risk to you, which are things that are highest priority to you, right? And when you do a materiality assessment, you can even, you know, you can make the results of that. Like you can share with your stakeholders, whether it be in reporting or other channels, which topics are most important to you, what goals are most important to you, right? Like if biodiversity is a paramount focus to you, then maybe you’re making trade-offs in favor of biodiversity, but like unfortunately we’re not in a space yet where there’s like a magic bullet solution that is the best thing for waste carbon and water. So everything typically has a trade off in talking about those trade-offs and like why you chose them and how that thing aligned with your goals can be a really good way to you know, engage people in how you’re going about things, how you’re approaching things as well as driving change, right? Like if everyone in your industry is facing those same challenges, is there the opportunity to collaborate even though your competition to drive better solutions because you’re all really facing that one trade off that maybe you can solve together or you can push for bigger brands to solve as well. So that’s kind of why I personally believe the importance in talking about trade-offs because you know, they’re everywhere unfortunately. And what’s the best decision for your business in relation to your sustainability goals might not be the same decision that your competitor makes like, and that’s okay, but it’s just, it’s really important to kind of identify your why and go from there. Okay, I think that covered all the questions. I’ll give another moment or so for more to flow in, but I really appreciate everyone taking the time today and working through these. And I also wanna call your attention to the QR code here to subscribe to our sustainable progress newsletter where you can stay, stay tuned on upcoming webinars and events as well as content that we put out. All right, well I hope everyone has a great rest of your day and take care.