It's a good end to an otherwise tricky year...

When we decided this year to go carbon neutral, we looked for a partner organisation to work with. After researching the huge range of options out there we went with a UK based consultancy, Carbon footprint, who have a team of experts dedicated to the process. They worked with us to appraise, reduce and finally offset our emissions.

Initially we worked to become carbon neutral ourselves, meaning we as a company have minimised the carbon that we directly produce and use in terms of energy (type 1 and type 2 emissions) and we have offset what we can't eliminate. We took the view that the offset had to be a carbon reduction program, rather than the purchase of carbon credits which are a cheaper and easier alternative, and are not the gold standard of offsetting. At present the only way to actually reduce CO2 in the atmosphere is through planting trees, so we have used a verified carbon standard tree planting project in order to achieve this.

We recognise that this is not the end of our responsibility to the planet which we all call home, and we will be ramping up our efforts to do more over the coming years. Next year we will begin working on becoming a true net zero company, this means that not only will we be carbon neutral, but also all the companies in our supply chain will also be carbon neutral.