Our Carbon Footprint and Why it Matters
MEASURING OUR IMPACT
One of our main goals last year was to gain a better understanding of the impact of our operations. We’ve always tried to make environmentally responsible decisions, but until now we never fully understood our carbon footprint or how our choices were affecting the planet. We realised that in order to improve the way we do business, we needed to accurately measure our environmental footprint and lay out clearly defined goals for the future.
To accomplish this, we’ve partnered with the carbon auditing company Zevero. Over the last 12 months, they collected a wide range of data from both us and our suppliers to calculate our carbon footprint for 2021. This process has also made us aware of the wide scope of emissions we are responsible for. It’s not just our own energy consumption we need to think about, it’s been surprising to learn how many other indirect emissions contribute to our footprint too!
Every choice we make results in emissions being released somewhere along the supply chain. In order to take full accountability, we must include all the emissions that occur as a result of Calendar’s existence. This includes emissions from the farms producing our coffee, the factories that make our packaging, the waste treatment facilities, and everything else that makes our business possible. Even though these emissions occur outside of our direct actions, we must take accountability for them since they’re based on the choices we made.
THE BREAKDOWN
Our Total Emissions
106.95 tCO₂e
(tCO₂e = tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent)
Our second largest source of emissions comes from capital goods. This is the manufacturing of the company machinery and equipment we purchased during 2021. Due to the growth and relocation of our roastery, this was a significant part of our footprint, but we are predicting this to be much less in 2022. The purchase of our colour sorter was one of our biggest investments, and produced a considerable amount of carbon during its manufacture and shipping to Ireland.
Of the remaining emissions, our company’s energy usage is the only category that occurs at our own facility. These direct emissions account for only 9% of our overall footprint. Since over 90% of our footprint occurs outside of our roastery, this has highlighted the importance of aligning ourselves with suppliers who share our values and prioritise sustainable production themselves.
WHY IT MATTERS
Calculating our carbon footprint is important because it highlights where our emissions are coming from, and allows us to make more informed decisions moving forward. Investing in organic agriculture and switching to renewable sources of electricity, makes much more sense now we have the numbers in front of us.
This data also gives us the opportunity to improve. By implementing solutions and setting achievable goals, we can start to reduce our emissions where they matter most. Now that we know the vast majority of our carbon comes from green coffee production, we are exploring new ways we can work with our importers and producers to improve the way we source our coffee.
In the coming weeks, we will be releasing a more detailed account of our carbon footprint as part of our full transparency report for 2021. We’re currently in the process of calculating our footprint for 2022 and looking forward to being able to compare the data within the two reports. As we continue to monitor our impact on climate change, we’re determined to continually improve our accuracy and increase our accountability with each future analysis.
