How did we become carbon neutral?

First we assessed our carbon footprint

The first step to becoming carbon neutral was to do a carbon audit of nettletontribe to assess the total amount of CO₂-e we emit into the atmosphere annually. Some items assessed included electricity, fuel and gas consumption, staff travel, flights, consumables and waste. We found that nationally our carbon footprint totalled 805 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

Then we made some changes

Our carbon audit revealed that our largest areas of consumption were electricity & practice operations. We have already started tackling these changes head on by making one simple change: updating our power supplier nationally to Powershop, a carbon neutral energy provider. This alone reduced our carbon footprint by 29%.

After thorough research into different carbon offset options, we engaged Carbon Neutral, a profit-for-purpose carbon solutions provider, to offset our remaining carbon. We achieved our carbon neutrality through offsetting via an existing wind farm and investing in a large reforestation project in the Yarra Yarra Biodiversity Corridor right here in Australia!

The Yarra Yarra Biodiversity Corridor

The Yarra Yarra Biodiversity Corridor Project is a multi-species native reforestation project located in the northern wheatbelt of Southwest Australia. During the 1900s more than 90% of the native vegetation was cleared for agriculture and today, the degraded land is now no longer suitable for farming.

The project aims to create a 200km long green corridor from inland Western Australia to the coast, revegetating the landscape, encouraging wildlife to return whilst also removing an estimated 1.257 million tonnes of CO₂-e from the atmosphere. Since 2008, 30 million mixed species of native trees and shrubs have been planted over 14,000 hectares.

Images courtesy of Carbon Neutral.