Understanding your carbon footprint and how offsets help.
Why this should matter to brands.
If you work in retail, you know an increasingly important deciding factor in people’s shopping choices is sustainability—especially among younger generations. As shopping has evolved towards same-day or next-day deliveries, easy returns, and other consumer-centric services, businesses maintaining high levels of service, while also being good environmental stewards, have an advantage in the marketplace.
The proof is in the metrics:
- Products marketed as sustainable see growth and adoption rates of at least 5.6 times greater than those which are not.
- 54% of Gen Z shoppers consider their carbon footprint when making a purchase decision.
- 88% of consumers want brands to help them live more sustainably.
It all boils down to a simple fact: Consumers want to be more sustainable, but they need our help to do it.
Brands like Allbirds, Patagonia, Toms, Veja, and others, have carved out passionate and loyal customer bases by implementing good environmental practices bringing customers into their stores and turning one-time shoppers into brand loyalists.
Why this matters for the world.
A person’s carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) generated by our actions. Carbon dioxide equivalent (or CO2-e) is a metric measure used to compare the emissions from various greenhouse gases on the basis of their global-warming potential (GWP).
Greenhouse gases cause climate change by trapping heat and also contribute to respiratory disease from smog and air pollution. Effects of climate change caused by greenhouse gases include extreme weather, food supply disruptions, and increased wildfires.
Carbon offsets are an easy way to reduce your carbon footprint by contributing a certain amount of money (usually using a lifestyle-based calculation) to things like forestation projects, water cleanup, carbon removal technologies, etc. Yet, despite how easy it is to do this so few companies give their customers a way to do it (that’s why Neutrl exists, but more on that in a bit).
How can I offset my carbon emissions?
Besides making a real effort to reduce your CO2-producing behaviors, the best thing you can do is offset your emissions. At Neutrl, we wanted to make this a little bit easier. So, we built an easy-to-use solution to offer e-commerce customers the ability to reduce their carbon footprints during the checkout process with a push of a button. Easy right?
As far as how much it takes to offset your carbon emissions, most retail purchases will only require a 1-2% increase in the purchase price to cover the CO2 emissions they create. With the money you contribute, our team at Neutrl funds some of the world’s most innovative carbon removal technologies such as Running Tide’s Kelp Ocean Carbon Project.
As you may know, most plants absorb carbon to an extent but few are as efficient as kelp (which absorbs carbon 20 times faster than trees do!). So, Running Tide grows massive kelp farms near the ocean’s surface on biodegradable buoys and sinks them when the kelp reaches maximum length (sometimes exceeding 9 feet!) to the depths of the ocean, taking all of the carbon it absorbed along with it.
Doing Well by Doing Good.
At Neutrl, we want to encourage more brands and consumers to invest in turning the tide on climate change. People want to be environmentally conscious and lower their personal impacts, but figuring out how to do so on their own is challenging.
Making sustainability easier with authentic branding resonates with customers and the numbers prove it. In fact, we see an average increase of about 20% to cart conversion when Neutrl is added to a brand’s checkout process, and with one of our partners, in particular, we’ve seen a 66% adoption rate amongst their subscription customers.
Why do these metrics matter? It isn’t just a plug for Neutrl (well maybe a little). No, these numbers offer concrete evidence customers want brands to help them do more and live sustainably—it’s also why Klarna’s CO2 tracker is so widely used within the app. Neutrl is building a worldwide ecosystem of customers who are yearning for sustainable shopping experiences.
Follow our journey at Neutrl.com to learn more.
Carbon is out, Neutrl is in! Our mission is to empower the everyday person to feel hopeful and engaged about protecting our earth. That’s why we created Neutrl. We partner with retailers online to provide an actionable and easy way for their customers to reduce the carbon footprint of their orders and permanently remove CO2 from our atmosphere. Neutrl is the future of sustainability.