CLIMATE POSITIVE

Sustainability has been high up on Icebug’s agenda for several years. The step towards being able to measure what our total impact would be and to calculate the cost for it was therefore a little easier in comparison with most other companies.

By the end of the Summer of 2018, the urge grew in us to do more and act faster. As a company, our conviction became that we had the moral obligation to do what we could on our part to try and move towards a less risky place. And that meant that the ongoing work of step by step trying to minimize the negative impact was not enough. The hack we came up with to speed up towards being fully sustainable was to offset our emissions with a surplus, to not only be climate neutral but climate positive. We formulated our pledge: To become climate positive. This is a three-step process – measure, reduce, and offset. The principle is straight forward. There is a balanced state of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere where the risk of increasing temperature is acceptable. At this point, we’re way over that balance, and human activity keeps emitting more than the planet can absorb. But if you offset greenhouse gases emitted with actions that decrease the same amount of greenhouse gases, your greenhouse gas balance sheet is in check. If you offset more than you cause, you are part of the solution in getting closer to a balanced state. Offsetting is not a green card to carry on as before, and actual emissions have to go down. But it’s also not a letter of indulgence. It has a real effect.

Offsetting is the last step in the chain, and most of our time and focus goes into measurement and reduction. But we need to be realistic and acknowledge that we cannot reduce our emissions down to zero, so we offset twice of what is left of our emissions, thus making us climate positive.

By James Varkey and David Ekelund