Is Blueland Climate Neutral Certified?
Written by: John Mascari COO + Co-Founder at Blueland
June 5, 2021
Yes! We’re proud to be officially Climate Neutral Certified! From the beginning, lessening our impact on the planet has been a top priority for Blueland. Our Climate Neutral Certification is an important step in our journey to being a sustainable, planet-friendly business. But what does it mean to Climate Neutral Certified?
What Is A Climate Neutral Certification?
Climate Neutral is an independent, non-profit organization that works with companies to help reduce their carbon footprint. What does this mean? They help businesses like Blueland to measure, reduce and offset all of their carbon emissions to become carbon neutral.
- Measure: With the help of Climate Neutral, we do an audit of all of the emissions associated with creating our products, and getting our products to you. This includes emissions from our warehouse, emissions from our factories and the emissions associated with getting our products to you! We also look at other emissions associated with our entire supply chain and HQ.
- Reduce: Once we completed the audit, the next step is to create a plan to help further reduce the emissions we produce. At Blueland, we’ve worked on reducing our emissions since the start. By shipping refill tables and pouches that are typically smaller and lighter than traditional water-based cleaning products, we already significantly cut down on our carbon footprint. However, we’re always looking for ways to reduce our emissions even further -- and Climate Neutral helped us find additional ways to do so!
- Offset: Finally, once we’ve completed our audit and our emissions reduction plan, we offset any emissions we can’t reduce or cut out quite yet. This year, we’ve partnered with Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve to offset our emissions.
What Are Carbon Offsets?
Carbon offsets are a way to balance out the emissions associated with an individual, company or organization by investing in projects or technologies that employ carbon capturing, carbon storing or carbon saving capabilities. Companies purchase carbon credits to “offset” the emissions they produce by removing carbon emissions somewhere else.
Who Is Blueland’s 2021 Carbon Offset Partner?
In an effort to offset our carbon footprint, we’ve teamed up with Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve. Located in Borneo (Central Kalimantan, Indonesia), this project works to better the lives of the comminutes hit hard by Covid-19 as well as protect the natural carbon rich peat forests that make up the nearby national park.
For the community they’ve funded a floating clinic-- operated by locals-- to help the elderly, sick, and pregnant members of the isolated community. This project looks both at human and planet health, stepping in during a time of ciris to bring people together, aid them in the face of a pandemic, and encourage protection of the natural environment they call home.
How does Rimba Raya offset our emissions?
A huge initiative of Rima Raya in 2020 was the replanting of Mangrove seedlings to lessen the erosion of shorelines and improve the water quality. This is still going as they work their way down the shoreline. For many in the community, fishing is a way of life. This encourages marine biodiversity and also employees community members for planting and maintaining the mangroves.
Another initiative is forest patrol of the Tanjung Puting National Park. Groups are hired to regularly monitor the forest and watch out for fires and illegal logging. In the past year due to flooding, there hasn’t been much need for fire patrol.
Additionally, they’ve encouraged and educated local communities about carbon footprints, the benefits of solar power, and the importance of biodiversity. They aim to protect the entire ecosystem-- including the highly endangered orangutans by teaming up with Orangutan Foundation International.
What Does Rimba Raya’s Work Look Like?
Here are a handful of their biggest accomplishments:
- 47,237 hectares of High Conservation Value, High Carbon Stock peat forest ecosystems (64,500 total hectares) have been prevented from being converted to oil palm
- The project has planted approximately 350,145 trees, sourced from community nurseries that the project funded and paid the communities to plant
- They’ve rescued and rehabilitated in the forest 25 orangutans that had wandered into villages
- 1794 solar lights have been provided – one to each household, and 2 solar plants have been installed in two villages
- Floating health clinic
How can I learn more about carbon emission offsets?
Researching the 100s of projects, charities, and companies around the world that are helping offset our carbon footprint is the best way to start. Rimba Raya is just one of the many out there working towards a greener future.
Due to the recent rise of climate activism, education surrounding climate change, and push for action on climate change, carbon offset projects are growing rapidly. Until we find alternatives for manufacturing and shipping emissions, this is the best way companies can neutralize their carbon footprint.
Rimba Raya believes you can save the earth, one forest at a time. I have to agree.
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